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Police Discretion

Policing Essay

Police discretion poses an interesting paradox in our democratic society. As Ramirez et al (2000) explains, ‘we entrust the police to enforce the law, to maintain order, and to use legitimate force if necessary'. Not only do we expect police to complete this rather demanding task, but we also ‘expect them to accomplish these tasks by treating the public in a fair and even-handed way'. Thus a major problem is the ‘over policing' and ‘stereotyping' of marginalized groups such as the mentally ill, homeless, indigenous or juveniles. The use of police discretion in the context of traffic stops is also an issue worthy of attention. Whilst some believe the use of police discretion unavoidably marginalizes these groups, others think the police should adopt and enforce a ‘zero tolerance' stance to combat the problems discretion causes. Despite the law enforcement problems discretionary powers have caused, to completely abolish it could in fact exacerbate the problems already present.

Brown (1981: 170) describes three types of indicators used by patrolmen in deciding whether or not to stop someone. These are incongruity, prior information and appearance. As two of these relate solely on looks and initial perception it is not surprising the most cited problem with police discretion is the tendency to over police and stereotype particular groups. In Australia, the empirical evidence shows that Aboriginal people are arrested at a far greater rate than others in the population (Smandych et al 1995:250) and similarly that that apprehension rates for young Aboriginal are approximately nine times higher than for non-Aborigines Luke and Cunneen (1995:81). Similar patterns emerge in other countries (such as the US) where people of African-American or Latino descent are in contact with the criminal justice system at disproportionate rate to the general population, with the youth being the major sub group affected. Teplin (2000) also identified those exhibiting...