Nic White

04/12/2017

CJ 1010

Prof. G. Butler

Do you believe that officers should exercise discretion?

When asked this question, it is hard to decide on one or the other. While It can

help law enforcement move on to matters that are more prone to hurting public safety, it

can also cause an unfair disadvantage to some. When the officer is deciding whether to

give someone a ticket or arrest someone it can involve various factors based on the

situation and the own officers personal judgement or beliefs.

One way it can help is by officers giving someone warnings as to save time for

more threatening offenses. While this is not going to always be saving them time it is still

a possible positive effect. This is also a good thing for those that cannot financially

afford a ticket or arrest, though this is easily arguable that they should be following the

law, it is still a positive effect for the offender.

This could also be a negative effect because of the officers personal belief

system, which could include their ethics or religion. This provides an unfair playing field
because this could determine the officers discretion based on the citizens gender, race,

religion, or other profiling ways of thinking. It could also be based partially off the

officers mood.

While these are all just possibilities of what exercising discretion could cause it is

fair to contemplate because of the vagueness of the term discretion. Discretion is a very

vague term that is not clear enough to be given lightly. In the world, we live in today it is

niave to think that each officers beliefs are going to allow them to make a righteous

choice when choosing who to give leeway and who to not.