Kyle Baughman

CJ 1010
Dr. John Hill
6 December 2015
Final Writing Assignment: Police Discretion
Police discretion is something I believe is often overlooked by both
sides of the law. Too many times police officers put good people in jail that
shouldnt be there only because they are doing their job. On the other side of
things, civilians dont appreciate the job the police officers do and realize
that perhaps the officer let them off easy when the law stated that they
should not have. Discretion is the ability of criminal justice professionals
making operational decisions based on personal judgement instead of formal
rules, laws, or official information (Gaines & Miller, Criminal Justice in Action
5th Ed., 2009, p. 16).
In my opinion, I believe police officers should exercise discretion. The
problem with our laws is that they were made by humans, and humans are
cable of making mistakes. This is very apparent with just how often our laws
are changing. Unfortunately, not every situation an officer encounters will be
black and white, and most of the time will require discretion or else everyone
in the nation would be in jail. Imagine a small child who doesnt know any
better steals a piece of candy from the store. By law the child should be

arrested. An officer of the law knows this child broke a law, but at the same
time is also knows this child doesnt even know what stealing means at this
point of his life. With discretion, the police officer would be able to use good
personal judgment and understand this unique situation.
Through the use of police discretion, I believe the law enforcement and
overall public safety benefits. The amount of people per police officer within
an area is usually greatly out of ratio. In order for law enforcement to be
effective, they must decide which situations are more important for the
public safety to address. Through the use of discretion, an officer would be
able to make a personal call when it came to responding to a call about
graffiti and a call about child endangerment.
Police discretion although I believe is an overall much needed aspect
within law enforcement, can also have its downfalls. This question of if
discretion raises ethical issues is not that surprising because, after all
discretion relies on personal judgement. We as human beings are full of
many different beliefs and ideas. Law enforcement officers are still human
and also share this same way of thinking. What one officer believes can vary
greatly from another officer. However, I believe with proper training and
testing of different scenarios, law enforcement can make sure that their
officers are mostly on the same page when it comes to debatable situations
on what is acceptable or not.

I believe that nothing in this world is always what it seems and varies
greatly from one situation to the next. Since this is out of our control, I dont
believe that we as a society would ever be able to make laws that fit all
these variables. This is exactly why we need to continue to train, teach, and
encourage police discretion. The world is never just plain black and white
and in order to have effective law enforcement, we need officers that know
how to deal with all the grey.