Role of Discretion in Law Enforcement Human civilization has always been defined by the establishment of ethical codes, laws which individuals must obey for the greater good of society, and for every rule that mankind has devised there have been those willing to transgress. Criminal misconduct has remained a pervasive and prevalent issue across all cultures and historical eras, spanning the spectrum of age, gender and socioeconomic status, and the invariable commission of illicit acts demonstrates one of humanity's most enduring social dilemmas. Public officials, police forces and private citizens alike have routinely attempted to mitigate the consequences of crime through preventative measures, by anticipating offenses before they occur and incarcerating those who are most prone to engage in criminal activity. While the predictive power of personality profiles and prior behaviors is well documented, other attributes like religious affiliation, ethnic identification and racial background are increasingly being used to extrapolate expected crime rates. The concept of law enforcement agencies profiling certain population groups to predict the occurrence of criminal acts has become notorious in the wake of institutionalized, racially motivated abuses, but a groundbreaking theory published in 1982 by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling expands the idea, attributing high rates of criminal activity to the relative upkeep of surrounding neighborhood features. The revolutionary "Broken Windows" model of crime prevention as posited by Wilson and Kelling holds that "if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken" (1982), with an escalating series of criminal activity stemming indirectly from the untended building, and thus the untended behavior, of nearby inhabitants. The following literature review will examine the efficacy of the "Broken Windows" approach to anticipating and mitigating crime, by analyzing the evidence gathered throughout over three decades of law enforcement experience...
Working to test the theory of deindividuation, which described a proposed "process in which a series of antecedent social conditions lead to a change in perception of self and others, and thereby to a lowered threshold of normally restrained behavior" (1969), Zimbardo designed a number of ingenious experiments in the late 1960's that ultimately provided the foundations for Wilson and Kelling's eventual interpretation of the "Broken Window" phenomenon. By placing an identical pair of 1959 Oldsmobile autos on two distinctly different streets, one adjacent to the Bronx campus of New York University in an area where crime rates and gang activity were high, and the other on a street in Palo Alto, California near the affluent area surrounding the Stanford University campus, Zimbardo tested the effects of environmental cues on the willingness of individuals to commit an increasingly serious series of criminal act. Although in both cases the cars had left with no license plates and their hoods up, to provide what Zimbardo terms "releaser cues" that signal societal apathy, the behavior observed in Palo Alto, where manicured lawns adorned suburban strip malls and upper-class neighborhoods, was decidedly different than the scene in the Bronx. While the car left idle near Stanford was left unmolested for more than a week, with passersby seemingly uninterested in committing acts of vandalism or theft, the abandoned vehicle triggered an almost instantaneous response of deindividuation, as locals immediately stripped the car bare of usable parts, committed 23 separate acts of vandalism, and integrated the scrapped shell into their surroundings as a makeshift playground for children to climb on.
Law Enforcement and Hiring Laws Types of Policing Community policing primarily consists of law enforcement through police patrol and presence. Problem oriented policing is very similar to community policing, except that instead of merely patrols actions are directed to address a specific problem. A problem oriented policing response is exemplified by increased patrols at problem traffic intersections or enforcement of pedestrian crossing from speeding traffic. Problem oriented policing is noted to have
Community policing calls for decentralization both in command structure and decision-making. Decentralized decision making permits officers on the front line to take responsibility for their job. When an officer is given more power to create solutions to problems and take risks, they feels more accountable for those solutions and assumes a greater responsibility for the well being of everyone in the community. "Decentralized decision making involves flattening the hierarchy of
This is known among police as "professional courtesy," and violating it has been known to result in the cited officer's commander's contacting the issuing officer's commander with an (informal) complaint, expected to be addressed by an (informal) lecture on the topic of professional courtesy. Occasionally, a "ticket war" will erupt between neighboring police departments, sparked, initially, by the issuance of summonses by officers from one department to off-duty officers from
While it is a felony to flee the scene of an accident, a police office is ethically bound to report the issue if he himself is in such an accident. The same is with drunken and disorderly behavior or destruction of property. In "Choirboys" the police officers would congregate in a park after hours to engage in drunkenness, disorderly behavior and sexual orgies with women. And this park was
By comparison, more proactive, crime-focused, or zero tolerance policing strategies make discretion more difficult to control administratively for several reasons. Specifically, proactive officers generally function more autonomously in choosing where to initiate police action; consequently, they are involved in much higher proportions of serious criminal matters, requiring many more spontaneous opportunities to exercise discretion. As a general rule, proactive police officers engaged in crime prevention-focused administrative strategies encounter more dangerous situations and
Many times, police officers are attacked or the prisoners themselves are injured during this booking process. The deaths and injuries, specifically of prisoners belonging to ethnic minorities, have triggered conflicts between the police and the community in recent years. Studies showed that the separation of the arresting officer and the suspect appeared to lessen the rate of reoccurrence. The studies recommended an evaluation of procedures and reinforcement (Community Relations
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