Benefits of Police Discretion

The term discretion has several meanings the liberty to decide what should be done in a specific circumstance is one general universal definition. But when dealing with criminal justice and police work the description changes a bit. The criminal justice definition of discretion is Police discretion discusses the authority given to a police officer that allows him or her to decide how to best handle a certain situation. This is designed at increasing the flexibility of the criminal justice system as the punishment may not always be the suitable approach of dealing with crimes. Discretion may also permit a police officer to overlook a minor offense giving the offender a warning. But with discretion the officers try not to overdue the law by not arresting every person for every little crime that they come across.

In a sense police discretion is pretty much up to the officers to decide how much of the law will be applied based on how serious they think the crime is in the situation. It tends to show officers are reasoning kind people whose judgment is very important when it comes to who gets arrested for a crime and who doesn’t even if the offender and the evidence is there in plain sight like catching someone with a small bag of weed and just taking it away and letting them go. Another example would be busting down a college party and catching teens underage drinking and not arresting them and charging them with disorderly conduct and just simply allowing them to go home.

Discretion is something that has to be practiced and exercised. Because police agencies don’t have enough officers to patrol whole areas and have eyes on at all times and ensure that there is no crime and to catch it all is just simply impossible. Learning to be d...

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...stically can’t be eliminated because it actually helps to balance out many things like the fact that they can’t be everywhere and are short on staff and can’t arrest every Tom and Jerry that they see breaking the smallest of crimes. They would over flood the system which cost money the states money to house criminals. In conclusion human nature the way some officer are brought up they don’t want to just go out and be arresting every person that they see breaking the law its human nature to want and help people out any maybe give them a break like pulling over a woman who is a single mother of two and gets caught speeding to go pick up her kids from daycare a humane cop would just warn her and let her go with a warning in a situation like that issuing that woman a ticket would leave a negative perception of the police by not showing mercy based on her circumstances