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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 9 page paper looks at the concept of police discretion assessing what it is, how and why it is used and whether or not it is needed. The paper looks at the general concepts and then considers these as they manifest in the real world, using examples from Australia. The bibliography cites 11 sources.
Page Count:
9 pages (~225 words per page)
File: TS65_TEpoldiscr.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
everyday tasks, these include issues such as what to investigate, who to question, who to search and charge. These are all are some of the examples where discretion plays an
important role (Galligan , 1994; Finanne, 1990, Travis, 1983). Overt tine there have been political trends calling for zero tolerance; a position where all illegal acts are fully pursued and
prosecuted, however, in reality zero tolerance is a idealistic concept as the required manpower and resources are simply not available for full zero tolerance policing (Grabosky, 1999). There are
also arguments that full enforcement may not always be in the public interest, especially for trivial offences or where there may be high social costs. The issue becomes what degree
of discretion should be granted to police offices and how should it be exercised, especially when there is the potential for that discretion to allow illegal acts to go unpunished
and facilitate increased levels of discrimination. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the way that police discretion is exercised has become controversial. When examining the use of discretion it is important
to differentiate between true independent discretion and the utilisation of interpretive judgement. While the two are almost always interlinked and interpretive judgement must always play a part in police work,
discretion is a more arbitrary practice (Bronitt and Stenning, 2011). For example, where a police officer is called to a road traffic accident, an initial assessment may be to determine
whether the incident was a genuine accident, or whether there were some actions which involved careless or dangerous driving. The police officer has to interpret the situation in order to
determine whether or not there has been a prima facia crime (Bronitt and Stenning, 2011). Interpretive judgement that determines an incident to be an accident is a decision based on
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