Police Discretion: The Ideal versus the Real

Goldstein, Herman

doi:10.2307/973838

Cited by 85 publications

(51 citation statements)

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“…Such discretionary judgement among front-line officers can create certain gaps between the ideals and the realities in law enforcement (Goldstein, 1964). This study underlines the exercise of such discretionary assessment, and the resulting gaps, as exemplified by local police initiation strategies.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying human trafficking in Norway: A register-based study of cases, outcomes and police practices

Bjelland

2016

European Journal of Criminology

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This article examines the identification of human trafficking crimes in Norway. By combining two different sources of police registry data that contain the total set of human trafficking cases reported to the Norwegian police between 2003 and 2013, the study examines the role of the police in the creation of human trafficking complaints, the characteristics of the complaints and their outcomes. Findings suggest that, despite a growing number of reported human trafficking complaints, the police seem to play a decreasing part in the identification of human trafficking crimes. The potential under-representation of police initiatives and its consequences for case outcomes is discussed in light of a theory of discretionary decision-making among police officials.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying human trafficking in Norway: A register-based study of cases, outcomes and police practices

Bjelland

2016

European Journal of Criminology

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“…This brings us back to the central role of discretion. For some commentators greater community oversight should form a mechanism for structuring the discretionary activities of police officers (Goldstein, 1963;Kelling, 1999). This article has drawn attention to how a primary role of the neighbourhood officer is to mediate the varying demands of residents and the police service, in the context of limited resources and we have drawn attention to the ways that they ration the allocation of their time.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These moves are inevitably bound up in questions regarding how officers use their discretion to determine priorities and allocate resources (Morgan, 1987). Indeed, one of the reasons for calls for democratic control over operational policy is precisely because the 'doctrine of accountability to the law offers the police no guidance about how their unavoidable discretion should be exercised' (Morgan, 1987: 92) (see also Goldstein 1963). Community policing is designed to re-structure police decision making -moving discretionary judgements about the problems that officers will and will not focus on from officers to residents.…”

Section: Democracy New Localism and Community Policingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participation, ‘responsivity’ and accountability in neighbourhood policing

Bullock

Leeney

2013

Criminology & Criminal Justice

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Neighbourhood policing, a contemporary form of community policing developed in the UK, has sought to increase public participation in policing and to develop processes through which residents work in co-production with partners and other state agencies to tackle problems. The aim has been to create mechanisms through which residents can hold the police service to account in dealing with the problems that matter to them. Drawing on interviews with neighbourhood policing officers, this article examines the operation of these processes in practice. We focus on the nature of resident participation in neighbourhood policing; the extent to which police officers organise their priorities around those of residents who participate; and, the ways in which officers work with other state agencies and residents themselves to tackle certain problems. Ultimately, this article questions the notions of accountability embedded in neighbourhood policing and whether the neighbourhood policing approach offers an effective mechanism for holding officers to account by residents.

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“…Police discretion is also vital for another reason: it is impossible to enforce all laws, all of the time; or even for a fraction of the time (Goldstein 1963). Police are constantly engaged in the process of deciding when, where and on whom the law should be applied, and for all that this is a highly imperfect process (the law is misapplied, the 'wrong' people are targeted) it is also inevitable.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Enabling and Constraining Police Power: On the Moral Regulation of Policing

Bradford

Jackson

2015

SSRN Journal

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In this chapter we consider some of the ethical challenges inherent in the regulation of discretionary police power. Discretion is central to police policy and practice, but it also provides a level of freedom that opens up the space for injustice and inequity, and this is seen most vividly in recent debates about unfairness and racial profiling in the distribution and experience police stops in the US and UK. How to regulate discretionary power is a challenging question, and this is especially so in the context of practices like stop-and-search/stop-and-frisk. The ability to stop people in the street and question them is central to policing as it is understood in many liberal democracies, but under conditions of unfairness and questionable efficacy -when the application of this particular police power appears unethical as well as ineffective -one can reasonably ask whether the power should be dropped or curtailed, and if curtailed, how this would work in practice. Word count 12,100 words BiographyBen Bradford is Departmental Lecturer in Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford Jonathan Jackson is Professor of Research Methodology and member of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at the LSE. AcknowledgementsJon would also like to thank Yale Law School and Harvard Kennedy School for hosting him during the research leave that allowed him to wrote this chapter; he is also grateful to the UK's Economic and Social Research Council for funding that research leave (grant number ES/L011611/1).

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Police Discretion: The Ideal versus the Real

Cited by 85 publications

References 0 publications

Identifying human trafficking in Norway: A register-based study of cases, outcomes and police practices

Identifying human trafficking in Norway: A register-based study of cases, outcomes and police practices

Participation, ‘responsivity’ and accountability in neighbourhood policing

Enabling and Constraining Police Power: On the Moral Regulation of Policing

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