"Life is C between B and D" - Answers -- Jean-Paul Sartre
police discretion - Answers -- The decision-making power afforded to police officers
- Allows them to decide if they want to pursue police procedure or simply let someone
off with a warning (the law dictionary).
George Kelling's observation - Answers -• 2 parts of decision making
:1) Whether to intervene, and if one has decided to
intervene
2) how best to intervene
Criticality of Police Discretion - Answers -•Officers must make decisions - the law and
officers' decisions do not always correspond.
•It is not practical or advisable to arrest all suspects.
• Police officers are de facto policy makers
• Officer decisions do not always correspond with the law
Classic Studies of Police Discretion - Answers -- Jerome Skolnick's Justice without Trial
(1966)
- Decisions on what to do with suspects can be made without
trial at all.
- Symbolic assailant
• A person a police officer thinks is potentially dangerous
Conflict between law and order
Classic Studies of Police Discretion - Answers -• James Wilson's 3 Policing Styles:
Watchman
- Main concern is achieving "order maintenance" through control of
illegal and disruptive behavior
- Use discretion liberally
- Informal police intervention (e.g. persuasion, threats, "roughing up", etc.).
Classic Studies of Police Discretion - Answers -•James Wilson's 3 Policing Styles:
Legalistic
• Enforce the letter of the law
• "Laissez faire" policing
• Avoid community disputes arising from violations of social norms that do not break the
law
, Classic Studies of Police Discretion - Answers -• James Wilson's 3 Policing Styles:
Service
• Meet the needs of the community and serve its members
• Officers see themselves as helpers
• Cooperation with other agencies such as social services (e.g. counseling) for crime
prevention
Broken Windows Policing - Answers -• Based on Zimbardo's experiment (1969)
• Wilson & Kelling (1982)
• Focusing on low-level and quality-of-life offenses
• Prevention of more serious crimes
Which of the following is NOT a correct statement about discretion? - Answers -Police
officers' decisions and the law always correspond.
Which of the following is a correct statement of Broken Windows Policing? - Answers -It
focuses on solving low-level and quality-of-life offenses. AND The main goal is to
prevent more serious crimes based on the idea from Zimbardo's psychological
experiment.
Identified 2 dimensions of police ethical development - Answers -perspective and
passion
Perspective - Answers -the extent to which an officer understands human suffering and
shows compassion
Passion - Answers -how comfortable the officer is in using coercive means
the cons of police discretion - Answers -- Potential for abuse
- Potential for corruption
- Possible citizen complaints
- Lawsuits when things go wrong
All officers are similar (characteristics and behavioral patterns) - Answers -• Sociological
• Psychological
• Organizational
Sociological - Answers -(a demographic standpoint)
• The typical police officer is a white male
• Women and minorities are not well-represented
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