NCJ Number
99030
Date Published
1985
Length
12 pages
Annotation
Although law and organizational regulations are required to minimize gross improprieties in the use of police discretion and to introduce predictability and order in police functioning, the psychological and ethical insights of individual officers applied to particular situations must be preserved to prevent policing from being insensitive and mechanical.
Abstract
Abuses in the use of police discretion have been eliminated or minimized by setting legal and administrative parameters for the use of police discretion. Legislation delineates police behavior that is clearly abusive, and administrative regulations set guidelines for the use of police discretion in particular situations. A third approach blends management principles and psychology to develop general guidelines for appropriate police behavior in situations likely to be encountered in field duties. These efforts express the desire of the American culture to provide bureaucratic order and predictability in human behavior. Attempts to make police behavior mechanical and predictable can, if pushed to the extreme, preclude the exercise of creative, sensitive ethical decisions that respond to the circumstances of particular persons in problematic situations. Officers should be trained in psychology and ethics so that they are prepared to exercise ethically sensitive individual judgments within the broader parameters for behavior set by law and administrative regulations. Nineteen suggested readings are listed.