CR4015. Module Title: Criminal Justice Process.(Criminology) Law Essay

THE NEED FOR POLICE TO HAVE WIDE DISCRETION IN THE EXERCISE OF THEIR POWERS, AND THE PROBLEMS THAT CAN RESULT FROM GRANTING SUCH DISCRETIONARY POWERS TO THEM
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Wide Police Discretion Powers
Discretion refers to a given power to law enforcers in making their own decisions concerning the matter. The law enforcement officers enjoy the freedom and privileges to behave in compliance with their police authority to interrupt, detain, and use force on a detainee. Discretion requires the desire and the capacity to make choices, which is as ambiguous as the definition of police authority. As a proportion of all police that a citizen encounters, police authority is rarely invoked. Officers regard their power as a resource in situations of "treatment," and often they can deal with situations without recourse to legitimate positions. Discretion is warranted to decide on whether to search, whether to arrest someone or to assist somebody. However, police discretion is not warranted where an authority has already issued a warrant of arrest. Here, the difference is that discretion is warranted when an unforeseeable event happens during the Police officer's time of duty. Thus, a decision has to be made timely to prevent further harm. In contrast, the discretion will not be necessary where a decision has already been made, and the only remaining task is that of the effecting the decision.
Discretion means the ability to make choices and decisions. For instance, the Courts of Law have the option to decide whether or not to allow an amendment of pleadings. However, in the context of policing, discretion means power that is rendered to law enforcement officers to make their own decisions concerning the matter at hand (Myhill and Johnson 2016, p.10). As a general rule, Police Officers are expected to conduct their duties following Written Laws and Regulations. However, unforeseen situations require Police Officers to exercise their discretion to prevent further harm while performing their duties. This leeway allows for some flexibility in ensuring adherence to the existing laws. Police discretion is often necessary when the involved officer has to decide whether to conduct a search, arrest someone, assist someone, or issue a traffic ticket. An example of this situation is when an officer sees a vehicle being driven without headlights in the course of his duty. After stopping the driver, the officer needs to decide whether to issue a traffic ticket. After confirming whether the driver has had a previous record or their record is clean, that decision will be made. A practical example concerns the situation in the United States, Canada, Italy, and the United Kingdom. These few countries have issued curfew and partial or total lockdown s during the on-going health pandemic. When a Police Officer finds an idle person loitering on the streets, the officer will have to exercise his or her discretion in deciding whether to arrest the person or issue a warning.
Importance and Need for Discretion
As professionals who have undergone adequate training, the police officers need absolute discretion doing their jobs in the enforcement of the law. However, dispensing this critical element in policing requires strong oversight by citizens. Also, there is a unique need for punishing those officers who stray and go beyond the limits. Police discretion works well where there is a good citizen review board, working independently and separate from the police force. Europe, for instance, there has been recent public outcries form citizens. The matter seems to have escalated as some police officers act like anything they do is right and acceptable or is within the law. Some cops believe nothing will happen to them when they abuse their power. However, it is desperate and, therefore, immaterial to imagine that a police department can exist with discretion being banned because there could be the problem of people getting arrested for petty crimes. With police discretion, the officers have a say on whether or not someone gets arrested for minor offenses, without which juveniles may be reprimanded from time to time without solid grounds (Greer et al. 2020, p. 4).
The different levels of discretions deal with the varying situations in which they are used. Some may include domestic-based violence situations, violations of traffic, possible crimes on hate, or crimes involving individuals with mental illnesses. Domestic-based violence may be characterized by just verbal abuse (Myhill 2016, p. 7). In cases not evidenced by any signs of physical attacks such as bruises, it may be hard to determine who commenced it and who worsened it. Thus, the police officer applies judgment on the situation on whether to make an arrest and who to arrest. Also, for traffic violations, because so many people speed, the police officer might apply their discretion to issue a caution instead of filing paperwork. This element has spared valid cases where a driver unintentionally exceeds the recommended speed limit is genuinely apologetic.
For potential hate crimes, the officer may use their police discretion in determining if a crime contains elements of hate. These kinds of crimes are hard to decide on by evidence alone. Hence, the police officers have to judge the perpetrator's character for crimes that involve individuals with mental illness. A person of unsound mind is not charged usually because the law assumes that they may have perpetrated rime when they were not in control of themselves (Aplin 2019, p. 11). Police discretion comes in handy, especially when the police have to judge the individual's state of mind when the crime was being committed, as seen in cases involving drunken citizens. Police discretion may be the vast reason behind perceive racial based profiling. Certainly, cops get trained for using discretion policy alongside with perceived statistics. It is always easy to notice this observation among persons of individual races distant from the possibility of being rendered guilt-ridden for crimes. However, this argument plays a role in deciding that much discretion can't be banned in police departments.
Police discretion is used in most detective divisions. A detective decides on whether to stop an investigation of crimes as a result of the absence of leads for seeking a search warrant, conducting stakeouts, and questioning or choosing when to questioning possible suspects (Barlow and Walklate 2020, p. 408). When it comes to the patrol officer's role, the discre...