Police discretion and Dilemmas.

Criminal Justice
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Police Discretion Dilemma
Police discretion is the decision-making authority given to the police officers that permissions them to pursue a police procedure or make and independent decision regarding a particular situation (LaFrance, 2011).The primary responsibility of law enforcement agencies is to protect the citizens. However, in the daily routine of law enforcement activities, the police officers encounter tough situations that endanger their lives and find it difficult to undertake a wise decision. Some situations occur abruptly, and there is usually not enough time to assess them and make a precise action. In such cases, the police officers might not execute the right action and prompt the use of excessive or unnecessary force to deal with the situation. This may pose ethical dilemmas surrounding their profession and raise controversies about the degree of force that police officers should apply while on duty. This paper analyzes the dilemma surrounding police discretion theory and provides possible solutions to the dilemma.
According to Nowacki, discretion refers to decisions made by legal authorities rather than those made for illegal purposes. Also, discretion provides the right for decision making to lawfully authorized individuals within and institution to make decisions that are acceptable to others in the profession (Nowacki, 2015). This definition attempts to elaborate the existing dilemma regarding police discretion because it rules out decisions that are outside the legal understanding to be termed as discretion.

In this sense, a police officer’s subjectivity to a particular situation cannot be termed as discretion since it does not have support and back up from the law. However, when a police officer makes a subjective decision in good faith, and the outcome is positive, such decisions are discrete. When subjective decisions are not made in good faith, they do not qualify as discretionary (Whitaker et al., 2009). This illustration is a guideline for police before they make subjective decisions as they should first assess the outcome of their intended decision to avoid being condemned of injustice.
Reports have indicated that police officers who are still fresh in the service face a higher risk of making discrete decisions that do not comply with the legal provisions. Usually, discretion varies with the rank of the police officers in the sense that there are decisions that can only be made by police in the higher ranking. It is important for the police on duty to distinguish between the discrete decisions that she/he can make from those that are only allowed to be made by his/her seniors. In case a junior police officer makes an unwise discretion she/he may be subject to questioning and prosecution by the police department (Vandervort, 2009). The police agencies should provide guidelines to all their trainees regarding the decisions incidences that require discretion or subjective judgment while carrying out their duties. This shall reduce mistakes done innocently by police in the name of making discrete decisions.
There has been criticism about the use of discretion in the police service with others arguing whether the police unit is a profession or an occupation. When the police officers are mandated to carry out discretion, their responsibilities change from occupation to profession. The opponents of the theory of police discretion have argued that it has the potential to compromise the justice system (LaFrance, 2011). For instance, the claim that police discretion makes the police officers to fabricate evidence, summarize statements with bias, concentrate on guilt rather than truth and fails to disclose the required evidence for prosecution. This indicates that discretion provides the police the right to act with a high degree of autonomy and therefore, supervision plays very little role in the administration of justice. The seniors depend on the juniors for information because of the mandate was given for conducting an investigation. If discretional mistakes are made at lower levels, they are carried forwards and may cause problems in the justice system.
The discretionary decision of whether to arrest or not arrest offenders is also causing problems in the police. This scenario is being witnessed in domestic violence incidences where the police have the mandate to either solve the issue informally or charge the offenders. In the domestic violence policy, there are clear protocols, rules and procedures as pertains to the police service while handling such cases and police are advised to adhere to such procedures even if they have the discreet to decide the fate of such cases. The procedures for handling domestic violence related cases is set to limit discretion for arrest and officers will be held accountable if they chose not to arrest offenders of domestic violence while exercising autonomy (Diemer et al. 2016). In such cases, officers have raised concerns about them being forced to arrest individuals in situations where they would have otherwise solved the cases. The police feel that their ethical standards can be compromised in situations where they perceive the charges against a certain individual as unjust.

Police discretion causes ambiguity in trying to match the goal of a client with organization centered goals and social engineering goals. As such, the police officers are only allowed to press charges only where there is evidence irrespective of whether the charges are not necessary and traverse the goal of the client. This could be experienced in the case where the victim does not wish to pursue changes. Likewise, the police guidelines may also cause ambiguity in the administration of justice because an officer who strictly complies with the policy may compromise the investigation process continuing with the charges which she/he had the mandate to stop (Nowacki, 2015). This element might tarnish the image of an individual police officer in the face of the public in such a case receives an unfair verdict all in the name of adherence to policies of the service.
Despite that the police discretion theory is causing problems to the police, it is impossible for the police department to succeed without discretion. The police departments are not capable of detecting all crimes at the same time. The resources for detecting and investigating each and every crime would also not be sufficient for the police to make arrests. Discretion is, therefore, relevant to filter out offenses and only allow those that are most relevant to proceed for investigation and prosecution. If discretion were not allowed, the entire criminal justice system would be overwhelmed with cases causing public displeasure and lack of confidence in the system (Whitaker et al., 2009). Police discretion will always continue because of the problem of insufficient resources in the administration of justice. With the use of discretion in the police service, charges become limited to significant cases and provide the police the time to prosecute such specific cases. In this instance, however, the police face the dilemma between ensuring democracy and individual rights while trying to promote efficiency in the service (Whitaker et al., 2009). This scenario is also similar to the one that exposes the police to a risky situation where police have the discretion to choose between protecting individual rights, democracy, and his/her life. Critically thinking, the police must first protect their lives so that they can protect the lives of other people. As such if the life of police is endangered by the next party such as armed criminal, then she/he has the discrete to protect his/her life from the situation.

This discussion proves that the use of discretion within the parameters of the law is allowed and that the police officers have the authority to use their critical thinking in analyzing the situation before deciding any action. It is however learned that pressures from the police department, personal interests, and certain policies have tended to compromise the idea of discretion and also compromised the entire justice system. Even though discretion is still a controversial issue in the police departments and the judiciary, the issue cannot be avoided because it helps relieve the burdens of having many investigation and cases, most of which, are irrelevant but congest the justice system. Discretion has to be applied wisely because if applied incorrectly, the justice process becomes compromised and the public loses confidence in the very people it had entrusted to offer protection fairness. In the discussion, it is also important to note that the police, especially those at the lower level, face the toughest problems of unwise discretion and often stand prejudice and trial despite that the issue of description emanates from the entire system. Therefore, police discretion is a dilemma that requires more research to come with standardized policies that would classify any discrete decision and valid and lawful.
References
Diemer, K., Ross, S., Humphreys, C., & Healey, L. (2016). A ‘double edged sword’: discretion
and compulsion in policing domestic violence. Police Practice and Research, 1-13.
LaFrance, T. C. (2011). Targeting discretion: An exploration of organisational communication
between rank levels in a medium-sized Southern US police department. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 13(2), 158-171.
Nowacki, J. S. (2015). Organizational-Level Police Discretion An Application for Police Use of
Lethal Force. Crime & Delinquency, 61(5), 643-668.
Vandervort, L. (2009). Legal Subversion of the Criminal Justice Process? Judicial, Prosecutorial
and Police Discretion in Edmondson, Kindrat, and Brown. Judicial, Prosecutorial and Police Discretion in Edmondson, Kindrat, and Brown (May 31, 2009), 111-150.
Whitaker, G. P., Garmire, B. L., Fairchild, E. S., Muir, W. K., Manning, P. K., & Goldstein, H.
(2009). Managing discretion: A central dilemma of police administration.