Benefits Of Police Officer Discretion

For many years, there have always been either police officers or constables. With this job of enforcing laws, some people may think certain laws may or may not be unjust and they might choose to follow or not follow the law and arrest people on certain charges. Officer discretion is a big tool in law enforcement. Discretion gives officers a choice in what to do in situations and how to act. It is beneficial to not only the officers but it is also beneficial to the public in certain circumstances. Discretion is used for a wide variety of things such as deciding not to arrest someone or letting a person off with a ticket. Discretion is also used when deciding to use lethal force or not. There are many deciding factors when an officer makes decisions …show more content…
Although discretion can originate from many sources (e.g., officers, situations, structure), relatively few studies examine how organizational variables affect officer discretion.” Discretion is entirely up to the officer but that discretion is generally influenced by the department and the administration. Administrative policies are responsible for keeing officers in check and making sure that they are acting within the parameters of their job. However the use of discretion is not only for minor offenses but it also used for interpreting the vaugue laws that might be in place. While discretion can be used for good it can also be over used and lead into corruption, police misconduct, and can cause the public to not like officers. A couple of mitigating factors that influence an officers discretion is the administrative policy mentioned before and the department size. While a large police force can get away with using more discretion it can also lead to those officers becoming corrupt and abusing their powers. On the other hand the same can be said about the smaller departments; they are much smaller and in a smaller communtiy so everyone knows everybody and they might be willing to let the community members bye with a lot more stuff. Bureacracy is one of the biggest things in law enforcement agencies. No matter what size agency you go to there will be some level of bureacracy. This bureacracy influences how an officer will use disretion. An example of this would be an officer letting a known polititcian off for any kind of offense in hopes that it will help them out in the long run. This is the wrong way that officers use discretion. Discretion is something that is supposed to help the general public out and to help keep things peaceful by letting officers let people by with little things so that they won’t do the big