Discretion In The Criminal Justice System

Discretion is a prevalent feature found within the Criminal Justice System; from prosecutors, judges to the sheer forefront of the organisation, with the police who act as the ‘gate-keepers’; having the freedom to act according to his or own judgment; a key feature of routine police work (Waddington 2008: 267; Jones 2009). Researchers of policing have identified that police work is intrinsically discretionary in that it encompasses exercise of choice and judgment at “every level of police work, especially at the micro level” (Finanne, 1990: 218). Low policing exercises of discretion (stop and search, investigation, arrest, etc), have absorbed scholars’ attention who have recognised that officers “on the beat” make proportionately unsupervised decisions; where challenges arise when achieving efficient accountability for their implementations of discretion.

Thus, the purpose of this essay is to examine the debate of the two surrounding arguments where some have contended that an efficient and practical criminal justice system relies on police discretion as it allows the police to be flexible during times of scarce resources. Whereas, many scholars have explored the encompassing limits to this discretion such as issues of accountability, the ability to abuse such powers and perhaps the most precarious consequence of police discretion;