The past two decades have seen growing aware- ness of the complexity of police work, an ex- amination of the use of discretion in officers’ daily policing activities, and a better under- standing of the critical role community leaders play in the vitality of neighborhoods.
Noted criminologist George L. Kelling has been involved in practical police work since the 1970s, working day-to-day with officers in numerous agencies in all parts of the country and serving as an adviser to communities, large and small, looking for better ways to integrate police work into the lives context of the “broken windows” meta- phor, proposed by James Q. Wilson and Dr. Kelling in 1982 in The Atlantic Monthly, this Research Report details how an officer’s sensitive role in order maintenance and crime prevention extends far beyond just arresting lawbreakers—how discretion exists at every level of the police organization. Historically, police have asserted authority in many ways, often having nothing to do with arrest. Dr. Kelling takes a special interest in the use of discretion to exercise the core police authority, enforcement of the law. He wants to understand better why officers make arrests in some circumstances and not others, especially when they are dealing with the more mundane aspects of policing—such
as handling alcoholics and panhandlers and resolving disputes between neighbors. And he notes that police officers themselves are often unable to articulate the precise characteristics of an event that led them to act as they did. Kelling maintains that officers must and should exercise discretion in such situations. But giv- ing police officers permission to use their pro- fessional judgment is not the same as endorsing random or arbitrary policing. In his view, polic- ing that reflects a neighborhood’s values and sense of justice and that understands residents’ concerns is more likely to do justice than polic- ing that strictly follows a rule book.
Police work is in transition within commu- nities. The police are more frequently involved in creating and nurturing partnerships with community residents, businesses, faith-based organizations, schools, and neighborhood asso- ciations. Their role in the justice process re- quires even greater commitment to developing policy guidelines that set standards, shape the inevitable use of discretion, and support com- munity involvement. We hope this Research Report will help inform the continuing debate over the proper exercise of police discretion in this new era of policing.During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Frank Remington, Herman Goldstein, and others ad- vanced the notion that police departments are comparable to administrative agencies whose complex work is characterized by considerable use of discretion. Moreover, they advocated the development of guidelines to shape police use of discretion. Their thinking and work were ahead of their time; the field of policing was simply not ready to consider seriously the implications of this view. Policing was still mired in the simplistic and narrow view of law enforcement agencies as concerned primarily with felonies—the front end of a criminal .
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