Police Discretion and the Use of Force Essay -- Socia Issues, Discrimi

Discretion is defined as the authority to crystalise a decision between two or more choices (Pollock, 2010). more than specific on the wholey, it is defined as the capacity to identify and to document criminal and noncriminal events (Boivin & Cordeau, 2011). all(prenominal) law of nature military officer has a great deal of apprehension concerning when to design their authority, power, persuasion, or force. Depending on how an officer sees their duty to society will put an officers fineness. Discretion leads to selective enforcement practices and may result in discrimination against certain groups of people or select individuals (Young, 2011). Most police officer discretion is exercised in situations with individuals (Sherman, 1984). Discrimination can lead to well-grounded difficultys for an officer of the law. If discrimination due to an officers use of discretion results in a misdemeanor of due process it is a violation of the law (Young, 2010). D ue process is the constitutionally mandated procedural steps intentional to eliminate error in any governmental deprivation of liberty, life, or property (Pollock, 2010). One of the main concerns with using discretion is the possibility of it leading(a) to a violation of due process by racial profiling. Types of ostracise Police DiscretionRacial profiling occurs when a police officer uses a profile as reasonable suspicion to stop a person with the intent to bring consent to search their belongings (Pollock, 2010). These lolly are usually traffic stops and the officer is looking to obtain consent to search the individuals automobile. The profile used is found on race. In these cases, an officer is using their discretion to target minority groups because they believe they are involved in criminal activities... ...rsation among researchers. The problem I see with the topic of conversation is there is not a dole out of research done on the actual affects of the individua l discretion of each(prenominal) officer compared to a department that has been educated in following policies more than personal discretion. In fact, from what I saw there is not practically research on the effects of discretion at all. It seems alike it is a topic that is overlooked when researching the effectiveness of a department. I feel like before more solutions are found on how to correct the problem of discretion, more research needs to be done on how discretion plays a role in every day policing. Until this research is conducted, all the articles published are on theories of discretion causing problems, and all of the solutions mentioned are methods to correct a problem that has not even been proven to be an issue yet.