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Police Discretion as a Source of Inequality in Society
Police officers in the US have the freedom to make decisions using their judgment and experience when performing their duties. This discretion allows them to decide when to stop, search, arrest, detain, and even use their weapons on someone. The primary reason for introducing the discretion was to help police officers maintain law and order, prevent crime, and protect members of the public and their properties. However, despite being crucial in law enforcement, police discretion has also been a source of inequality in policing and our society as a whole. Generally, with discretion, police officers may respond differently to similar situations, practice selective enforcement, and prioritize some people, leading to unequal treatment of citizens. This paper will argue that police discretion significantly contributes to inequality in our society by supporting inconsistent enforcement of laws, promoting selective and discriminatory enforcement, and encouraging corruption within the police department.
Meaning of police Discretion and why it is essential in law enforcement
Police discretion is the power and freedom given to law enforcers to make decisions in their duties (Yao, 2023). Police officers can typically decide when to stop, search, arrest, detain, or use their weapon on someone with police discretion (Worden & McLean, 2014). This discretion is essential in policing, as it enables police officers to perform their duties efficiently by giving them the power to make decisions in different scenarios. It is the foundation of police identity, which makes it instrumental in law enforcement (Charman & William, 2022). Even with their power, police officers must follow the law and act within their authority.
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The first way through which police discretion can contribute to inequality in our society as a whole is through inconsistent enforcement of laws. By exercising their discretion, different offers tend to respond differently to similar situations or issues based on their feelings, experience, and understanding of the law, leading to inconsistencies in law enforcement (Black, 2001; Halliday, 2010). Police officers may harass and target some people more disproportionately than others due to this inconsistency, thereby contributing to societal inequality. For example, with police discretion, a police officer can arrest a person for engaging in a certain act, while another police officer can fail to arrest another person for engaging in the same act. Hence, without uniform guidelines for the use of discretion, there is inconsistency in law enforcement, leading to unequal treatment of people.
The other way discretion can contribute to inequality in society is by promoting selective and discriminatory enforcement. Sanders & Young (2007) argued that discretion can make a police officer look for guilt instead of truth, fabricate evidence, summarize statements with bias, and fail to disclose evidence. Hence, with discretion, law enforcement officers easily engage in selective and discriminatory enforcement, contributing to inequality in policing and our society. In the US, selective and discriminatory enforcement is a problem that particularly affects individuals from ethnic and minority communities (Halliday, 2010). According to previous studies (Epp et al., 2017; Kramer & Remster, 2018; Siegel, 2020), a significant number of law enforcers disproportionately target people from racial and ethnic minority communities by using their legal authority. For instance, during police stops, police officers tend to stop and search racial minorities, especially blacks, more frequently than whites (Kramer & Remster, 2018). Police officers practice selective and discriminatory enforcement by disproportionately targeting people from racial and ethnic minority communities, contributing to inequality in our society.
The last way police discretion contributes to inequality is by encouraging corruption in policing. Corruption in policing is typically caused by the misuse of power and authority given to police officers (Halliday, 2010). High police discretion may lead some police officers to engage in corruption, including accepting bribes from criminals (Halliday, 2010). Corruption significantly contributes to inequality in society by affecting income distribution and increasing poverty.
Conclusion
This paper has discussed how police discretion contributes to inequality in our society. The analysis shows that discretion is essential to policing but can lead to social inequality. Police discretion contributes to inequality by encouraging inconsistent enforcement of laws, selective and discriminatory enforcement, and corruption within the police department. To prevent police officers from misusing their discretion, police departments need to establish clear policies and guidelines for their officers on how to use the power accorded to them by the law to make fair decisions in their day-to-day activities. This can be done by updating the current guidelines and educating police officers on how to use their discretion.
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- Black, J. (2001). Managing discretion. Unpublished manuscript, London School of Economics, UK, 1–40.
- Charman, S., & Williams, E. (2022). Accessing justice: The impact of discretion, ‘deservedness’ and distributive justice on the equitable allocation of policing resources. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 22(3), 404–422.
- Epp, C. R., Maynard‐Moody, S., & Haider‐Markel, D. (2017). Beyond profiling: The institutional sources of racial disparities in policing. Public Administration Review, 77(2), 168–178.
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- Harris, L. (2022). Dangers of discretion: empirical evidence of inconsistency. Achieving Consistency in Sentencing, pp. 43–76.
- Halliday, G. (2010). LEJA 518: Issues Paper: Police discretion. Western Illinois University.
- Kramer, R., & Remster, B. (2018). Stop, frisk, and assault? Racial disparities in police use of force during investigatory stops. Law & Society Review, 52(4), 960–993.
- Sanders, A., Young, R., & Burton, M. (2007). Criminal Justice. Oxford University Press, USA.
- Yao, W. (2023, March). Police Discretion: A Power that Can Be Abused and Should Be Regulated. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Culture, Design, and Social Development (CDSD 2022) (pp. 620–628). Atlantis Press.
- Siegel, M. (2020). Racial disparities in fatal police shootings: An empirical analysis informed by critical race theory. BUL Rev., pp. 100–1069.
- Worden, R. E., & McLean, S. J. (2014). Police discretion in law enforcement. Encyclopedia of criminology and criminal justice, pp. 3596–3607.
