Police Discretion And The Criminal Justice System - agree
Discretion has the meaning of acting on one's own authority and judgment. In law, discretion as to legal rulings , such as whether evidence is excluded at a trial, may be exercised by a judge. Discretion exists at all levels of law enforcement , Politics and Governments and in many types of front-line bureaucrats. Discretion has been called "the Art of suiting the action to particular circumstances" Lord Scarman. Those in a position of power are most often able to exercise discretion as to how they will apply or exercise that power. The ability to make decisions which represent a responsible choice and for which an understanding of what is lawful, legal , right or wise may be presupposed. In the legal system, discretion is often defined as the ability of a judge to choose where, how and with what severity to sentence a person who has been convicted. A person chooses to utilize his or her options and decides which to use, whether this is a police officer arresting a person on the street criminal or evicting someone from an apartment civil or anywhere in between. Police Discretion And The Criminal Justice System.
This paper explains police discretion and the various Discrwtion mechanisms in place. Police discretion basically means the ability of police officers to make decisions based on the doctrines of courses of the actions. It is an important aspect concerning criminal justice, and has raised dilemma between enforcement of laws to the latter and the spirit of the law.
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During their trainings, police officers https://amazonia.fiocruz.br/scdp/essay/calculus-on-manifolds-amazon/technology-in-fahrenheit-451.php provided with different scenarios showing what they will expect while performing their duties, but since the provided situations are not exhaustive, the police always encounter different situations that need their personal decisions to solve the problems.
Another factor that forces the police to use discretion is when the laws are being amended, forcing the police to use discretion in the meantime, while waiting for the amendments of the laws. Other options are when the provided laws are ambiguous forcing the officers to disregard the interpretations of the laws and make use of their own reasoning capacities. It however important to note that police officers are mandated to use discretion as the last options available, and Crimina is bound by various norms like professionalism, social, legal and moral standards.
Other police departments limit the use of discretion or try to eliminate it by all means. In earlier days, nobody knew the existence of police discretion, when police offices came across a violation of the law, they had no other options but to arrest the offenders or make citations.
Prosecutors would then take legal action on the cases to the final limit of the law, while judges handed fixed sentences that were same to all the offenders irrespective of the nature and condition of the crimes. The use of discretion came into existence inas a result of police departments Jusgice that police work was at times tough, and police officers would encounter situations that required them to use their own judgments to solve situations at hand.
It was also discovered that the use of discretion by the police officers provided a source of motivation and job satisfaction. It also helped in creating more efficiency in the criminal justice systems. Police discretion can be used in different circumstances, and that each situation has different application of discretion. One of them is Police Discretion And The Criminal Justice System disputes concerning domestic violence where there is no obvious evidence of physical abuse.
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Therefore the police officers might be forced to use their own judgments in solving the disputes. Another example is that of traffic violations, other people speed accidentally and the police officers may decide to give other people warnings as long as they give an assurance that they will not repeat the same mistake again Schulenberg, Police officers also have to use their own discretions in determining if some crimes have some elements of hate in them, which the police have to judge using the characters of the perpetrators of the crime. Other cases involves crimes committed by people with mental problems, the police might be forced to either drop the investigations process or Police Discretion And The Criminal Justice System lighter punishments given to the offenders.
The other category is the situational variables, which includes factors like the nature of the offence, properties involved in the crime, how the investigations were conducted and initiated by who and the seriousness of the crime committed. The presence of witnesses or the media when an offence was committed also influences the aspect of police discretion. The other category is systems variables, which includes all the factors in the systems of a this web page society that have to be considered by the police before deciding to use discretion.
The other fact is that, communities with more resources may promote the aspect of the police using other options of punishments like imposing fines than the underprivileged communities. This will on other hand influence the use of discretions by the police. The other influence to police discretion is organizational variables, which include policies in the police departments and their organizational cultures.
The policies have written guidelines on the limits of discretion powers by Disvretion police officers. The final category is environmental variables, which is explained from the sense that different communities have different policies for running and managing the regions. For example, a region might have tough regulation concerning speed limits while others do not consider that as serious offences.]
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