Positive And Negatives Of Police Discretion

When talking about discretion we need an actual definition before anything. Discretion is when someone with power like a judge, public officer, anyone with authority makes decisions on innumerable
Matters based on his/her opinion within legal guidelines. This term discretion is both problematic and helpful in making and enforcing of criminal laws in Canada. When looking at discretion we can look at police and the Crown, police use discretion every day and so do the members of the crown. Discretion is something really helpful for officers because it makes their job easier but also causes various problems like officers start to ignore flagrant or egregious violations or crimes out of laziness, direction is based on each officer’s belief system …show more content…
The positives can be seen as negatives and negatives can be seen as positives. The way society can see discretion as sheer good is by having no bias officers and crown members but also have a degree of professionalism. It might be impossible to have no biases but trying our best to not being bias will make discretion much better for making and enforcing laws. As long as officers are trained correct they should have a good judgment on what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate to do. The meaning of this is if a person is trained correct and taught they can make good judgements like letting someone go for speeding or going to trial or not. On the topic of discretion being problematic or helpful in the making and enforcing of criminal law in Canada it can be debated but nothing is ever perfect and we see everyone make mistakes all the time so sometimes the crown and officers make a bad call but they do learn off that and don’t make the same mistake. I feel Discretion is more beneficial than problematic in our society, discretion allows people a chance most of the time and gets you out of deep trouble in cases which only helps society out. Getting out of some of the offences actually makes you understand the law better than getting in trouble, so I would say discretion is very much helpful in enforcing the law but don’t say it’s perfect because there are always problems but not that can’t be