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Flexibility and Discretion in Police Work
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20435 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1992 |
4,269 Words |
| Author
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Gregory E. Maggs
Gregory E. Maggs is assistant professor at the University of
Texas School of Law |
Few issues in criminal justice presently arouse the public's attention more than how much flexibility and discretion the police should have. Police departments and their officers traditionally have had broad authority to decide how to perform their work, and most people simply have trusted that they will exercise their powers in a professional manner. Yet, acceptance of the traditional arrangement has diminished, perhaps more in the past year than ever before. Disturbing incidents of misconduct, incompetence, and unresponsiveness have suggested to many a need for closer control over individual officers and for external constraints on departmental policy-making.
Concern about how the police are conducting their work, in fact, recently has led politicians, journalists, and other involved citizens to propose a variety of ways to reform the law enforcement system. The suggested reforms, which have received substantial publicity, very frequently strive to limit discretion of individual officers or to impose new procedures on police departments:
In Sand Diego, after police officers apparently used lethal weapons in several incidents unnecessarily, citizens quickly demanded laws limiting police authority to apply deadly force.
In Boston, after the police declined to arrest a man suspected of beating his spouse and evidence emerged that the beating later continued, proposals circulated for making arrests mandatory following complaints of spousal abuse.
Throughout the United States, when surveys found that many police departments had failed to develop workable procedures for addressing citizen complaints, federal officials considered establishing national standards to govern every police department.
Proposals for limiting the discretion of the police rest in large part on the straightforward idea that incapacitation will make them less dangerous. Whether in exercising physical force or responding to reports of crime, police officers cannot exercise poor judgment if they have no decisions to make. Police departments, similarly, cannot establish undesirable policies if they have not policy-making power.
The proposals, in addition to incapacitating the police in certain instances, also attempt to promote equality. Discretion, as many have recognized, creates opportunities for discrimination. Limiting discretion insures that the justice dispensed
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