Download Police discretion and existence of its abuse

Police discretion and existence of its abuse
Policing the Police is a thesis paper submitted to the faculty in December
1994 by Michael Kaufman. The purpose of the paper is to discuss the
question of police discretion and existence of its abuse. Therefore, the main
goal of the paper is to research improper use of discretion, unethical
behaviour as a result of it, and role of the management in the problem of
exercising discretion by police officers. In the end of the paper, author
managed to prove this hypothesis. The focus of the research is to recognize
the existence of unethical behaviour and provide the possible solutions for it.
The author outlines that the solutions for the problem of the unethical
behaviour are found in the closer consideration of training, education,
community outreach, and supervision. Each of those components is
important.
The author puts the great emphasis on the understanding of discretion power,
its origin, and use. Traditionally, the use of discretion has been widely
unsupervised. The author sees the reason for it in the nature of police work
itself. Most of his or her time an officer spends on patrol alone and
unsupervised, therefore the use of discretionary power is unsupervised as
well. That it is the main contribution to the unethical behaviour. Supervisors
and different rank managers are those people who have to remind constantly
a police officer his or he duties. In spite of the importance of supervision of
police behaviour and discretion, the officer’s conscience is important as well.
Thus, in the end the ethical decision depends on officer’s moral judgment.
However, the improper supervision and lack of competent management
contribute to the existence of unethical behaviour among police officers as
well. The origin of discretionary power comes from the reality of life itself. A
police officer is expected to enforce the law. However, it is impossible to
enforce all laws. Therefore, it is in a power of a police officer to choose what
laws to enforce and use his or her discretion.
One of the concepts the reader has to understand is the author’s idea of
ethical behaviour, which he presents as a behaviour consistent with “universal
social values.” Therefore, the author concludes that ethical behaviour will be
considered moral if society considers it moral. Thus, the morality of the
society in general is the base for ethics.
Because of the “close” character of the police subculture, it is always hard to
see the whole picture of misuse of discretionary police authority and track it.
There are no official statistical documents. Police departments try not to show
their problems outside. However, the author of the paper is sure that the
unethical behaviour does exist among the police officers. The examples of
this would be the existence of racism, graft, corruption, cover-ups, and police
brutality. In addition, racism includes not only biases against the offenders but
also against non-white police officers.
In order to understand the roots and causes of ethical and unethical
behaviour the author uses Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development. The
main component of the Theory of Moral Development is an idea that different
people function on the different levels of moral development, on the various
stages of conventional development. Every person from the childhood to the
adulthood goes through moral levels of development. Those levels are: PreConventional, Conventional, and Post-Conventional; each of them has two
sublevels. On the first stage, person’s moral decision is based on the
principle of how it is going to affect him or her personally. On the second
stage, a person is making ethical decision based on social rules and beliefs of
right and wrong. On the third level, the moral judgment is done from the
altruistic position, concerning rights of others. Kohlberg argues that the
majority of people, including many police officers, are functioning on the lower
levels of moral development, which is simply based on the idea of reward and
punishment. Only insignificant number of people is staying on the higher
levels of morality, on so-called post-conventional level, where complete
understanding of morality according to the given society is possible. Thus, the
majority of police officers function on middle level of moral development that
makes the unethical behaviour possible. Therefore, using Kohlberg’s Theory
of Moral Development as a guide, the authors makes a conclusion that there
is a correlation between personal understanding of morality and legal issues.
Kaufman thinks that Kohlberg’s model should be used during psychological
evaluation of a recruits.
In order to better to understand where the unethical behaviour is coming
from, the author researches the origins of discretion as well. The author
makes an emphasis that a police officer has a burden to choose, which laws
he or she will be enforcing because it is impossible to enforce all of them. In
addition, there are always different circumstances, which should be
accounted by a police officer as well. Therefore, a moral development of a
police officer is an important factor and a correlation link between morality
and law. In this case, an officer has to follow the rules of the society, as a part
of it. Society, therefore, determines what behaviour is ethical and which one is
not. Therefore, the following the conclusion can be made concerning ethics.
Ethics and the rules of the moral behaviour are the product of group thinking.
Consequently, group can influence ethical and unethical behaviour. Kaufman,
in this light, gives a good example of Rodney King’s beating, which proves
the group think and group ethics. There were many officers on the scene,
who did not participate in the beating but they did not stop it either. Those
officers were part of the group, which represents the police subculture. The
only person who was trying to stop the beating was a female police officer.
She did not belong to a “men’s club,” but she was a member of a different
sub-group. Thus, author makes a conclusion that group think can be bad
sometimes. Therefore, the police officers need to try to develop themselves to
the higher stages of moral development.
One of the most important ideas in the paper is an admission that in spite of
hardness to track an unethical behaviour, it still exists. The author is trying to
find the reasons for it outside of moral development as well. One of them,
Kaufman thinks, is a perception by police officers of every day job as a “war
on crime” and themselves as the “warriors.” Many police officers think that
they are in a constant war against evil, which has to be destructed but not
“apprehended.” Another reason can be the nature of police job itself. In a
regular course of job, police officers usually see the worst side of humanity
over and over again. Consequently, they start generalize some parts of
community, its members, and their behaviour. Eventually, a schema builds up.
Kaufman presents the possible solution for the problem of unethical
behaviour among police officers. The main components of the solution,
according to Kaufman, are training, education, community outreach, and
supervision. The author thinks that the misuse of police authority comes
partly from lack of training. He thinks that the problems of use of discretionary
power do not address enough during the training in police academy and on
the field. The training with emphasis on the decision-making process will help
to develop better police behaviour. One of the reasons why ethical behaviour
is not widely addressed during the training is that managers originally
suppose the higher level of moral development by a police officer. Kaufman
also argues that higher education should play a significant role during the
recruitment process, because at present situation the educational standards
are low. The reason for that is that police force presumed more as a military
camp. Community outreach needs to be developed through community
policing and establishing the ties between police officers and members of the
community. Finally, supervision and management participation will provide the
guidelines for the ethical behaviour.
However, the author realizes that each of the parts of the possible solution to
decrease unethical behaviour has downsides as well. For example, the
requirement of higher education will shrink the pull of applicants, the close
contact with community might result in favours to some members of it, and
too much management will reduce the ability of an officer to self-supervision.
Therefore, supervision needs not to prevent discretion.
In addition, the author shortly describes the history of policing in the United
States, starting from 1930. What reader needs to understand and take into
consideration is that Policing the Police was written in 1994, at the time when
the main ideas of Community Policing were just adopted and not as widely
popular as they are now.
The author makes the following conclusion. First of all, Kaufman proves his
hypothesis there is a presence of discretionary power and its abuse among
some of police officers; bribes, corruption, brutality are the proofs of it.
Kaufman indicates that supervision by the higher rank managers is a key
factor to control the use of discretion by police officers. However, the moral
development if a police officer is important factor as well. Using the example
of Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development, the author argues that the
ethical behaviour is learned and guided by the rules of the given society.
Therefore, a police officer who falls into Post-Conventional stage of moral
development would be a better officer. Consequently, personal conscience
combined with training, education, community outreach, and supervision will
make a good police officer who would exercise the power of discretion
properly. Kaufman argues the present to his time Code of Ethics for police
officers was vague and unrealistic. He thinks that one of the first tasks for any
police department would be the development of “customized code,” which
would consider the goals of that particular department.