The Law and Politics of Police Discretion
The Law and Politics of Police Discretion

Author: Gregory Williams

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1984-12-07

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13:

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This study examines the discretional decision-making of U.S. police officers with respect to the decision to arrest. It finds that socioeconomic status, age, sex, and personal appearance are among the factors influencing police arrest decisions, as well as the background, prejudice, experience, and personality of the individual officer. It concludes that strong and coordinated efforts on the part of police, state and local government, and the judiciary, will be needed to implement guidelines to control arrest decisions.

Working the Street
Working the Street

Author: Michael K. Brown

Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation

Published: 1981-09-07

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 1610445945

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Now available in paperback, this provocative study examines the street-level decisions made by police, caught between a sometimes hostile community and a maze of departmental regulations. Probing the dynamics of three sample police departments, Brown reveals the factors that shape how officers wield their powers of discretion. Chief among these factors, he contends, is the highly bureaucratic organization of the modern police department. A new epilogue, prepared for this edition, focuses on the structure and operation of urban police forces in the 1980s. "Add this book to the short list of important analyses of the police at work....Places the difficult job of policing firmly within its political, organizational, and professional constraints...Worth reading and thinking about." —Crime & Delinquency "An excellent contribution...Adds significantly to our understanding of contemporary police." —Sociology "A critical analysis of policing as a social and political phenomenon....A major contribution." —Choice

Vagrant Nation
Vagrant Nation

Author: Risa Lauren Goluboff

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0199768447

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"People out of Place reshapes our understanding of the 1960s by telling a previously unknown story about often overlooked criminal laws prohibiting vagrancy. As Beats, hippies, war protesters, Communists, racial minorities, civil rights activists, prostitutes, single women, poor people, and sexual minorities challenged vagrancy laws, the laws became a shared constitutional target for clashes over radically different visions of the nation's future"--

Handled with Discretion
Handled with Discretion

Author: John Kleinig

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9780847681778

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This collection of essays examines the nature of police discretion and its many varieties. The essays explore the kinds of judgment calls police officers frequently must make : When should they get involved? Whom should they watch? What constitutes a disturbance of the peace? What resources should be devoted to a situation? Does social welfare take precedence over law enforcement? Under what conditions, if any, may police officers engage in selective enforcement of the law? Each essay or pair of essays is followed by a response, presenting contradictory or supplementary views.

Police Discretion in India
Police Discretion in India

Author: Satyajit Mohanty

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-08-31

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1000905667

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This book is the first empirical study of police discretion in India. Going beyond anecdotal accounts, it addresses the issues and concerns of arrest discretion behaviour of police with analysis of available literature internationally, testing the validity in the context of police in India and explaining the gap that exists between the legislative intent and field law enforcement. It establishes how extralegal determinants like subculture, environment and situations influence arrest discretion as much as legal determinants such as statutes, rules, manuals and court rulings. It also provides vital explanations on the working of the police system in India. The volume will be of great interest to policymakers, police leaders, officers of judiciary, scholars and researchers of criminology and criminal justice, sociology and social anthropology and South Asian studies.

Taming the System
Taming the System

Author: Samuel Walker

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1993-05-20

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 019536015X

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It is a truism that the administration of criminal justice consists of a series of discretionary decisions by police, prosecutors, judges, and other officials. Taming the System is a history of the forty-year effort to control the discretion. It examines the discretion problem from the initial "discovery" of the phenomenon by the American Bar Foundation in the 1950s through to the most recent evaluation research on reform measures. Of enormous value to scholars, reformers, and criminal justice professionals, this book approaches the discretion problem through a detailed examination of four decision points: policing, bail setting, plea bargaining, and sentencing. In a field which largely produces short-ranged "evaluation research," this study, in taking a wider approach, distinguishes between the role of administrative bodies (the police) and evaluates the longer-term trends and the successful reforms in criminal justice history.