Police Discretion: Pros and Cons

Running Head: Crime and Punishment 0
Crime and Punishment
Student’s Name

Crime and Punishment 1
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Discussion........................................................................................................................................2
Pros..................................................................................................................................................2
Cons.................................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4

Crime and Punishment 2
Introduction
Discretion can be understood as an ability or power to make decisions. When it comes to
the policing, it can be treated as an ability of police officer to make a decision at an incident
regarding stopping people, using force or to arrest them (McCartney & Parent, 2015). In the
given report, a brief discussion of police discretion description in addition to the pros and cons
will be discussed.
Discussion
Police officers in the course of their performance always work as a line between legal and
illegal. In such a situation, they have to make some decisions. The role of police discretion
becomes more significant when an officer remains alone at his/her duty and the decision depends
on his/her personal discretion. Police discretion is a right itself that must be used in a lawful and
ethical manner. The same is necessary in order to make the police officer enable performing their
duties.
Pros
The main benefit of this right is that the same provided flexibility of work to police
officers. Because of this right, they are able to make the judgments at the time of an event where
no clear-cut solution is provided by law. This power also proves helpful in crime prevention.
Criminals have certain predictable patterns that they use in the commitment of a crime. Police
discretion allows a police officer to understand these patterns and to act accordingly (Lister,
2018). Sometimes, it does not seem right to precede an arrest due to the nature of criminal and