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Learning Objectives

10-1:  Define police discretion and the factors that influence it.

10-2:  Assess factors that can affect the use of discretion by police.

10-3:  Define the term ethics and discuss its importance in the field of policing.

10-4:  Identify and describe various organizational strategies that can be used to mitigate unethical police conduct.

Article 1
Wortley, Richard K. (2003). Measuring Police Attitudes Toward Discretion. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 30(5) 538-558. doi: 10.1177/009385480325480544

This article describes the construction of two scales to measure police attitudes toward the selective enforcement of the law. The Service-Legalistic scale measures police discretion along a flexible-inflexible continuum. Service-oriented police advocate the use of discretion to help solve social problems; legalistic police oppose discretion because it interferes with their duty to enforce the law equitably. The Watchman scale examines the use of discretion to maintain control. Watchman-oriented police simultaneously ignore minor offenses and call for greater powers to deal with serious crime. Service-related discretion was found to negatively correlate with authoritarianism and the belief that crime is caused by the individual dispositions of offenders; watchman-related discretion positively correlated with authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, and a belief in individual crime causation.

1. What is police discretion?
2. How do police styles impact the use of discretion?

Article 2
Baldwin, J. Norman, Gary R. Rothwell (2007). Whistle-blowing and the Code of Silence in Police Agencies: Policy and Structural Predictors. Crime & Delinquency, 53(4) 605-632. doi: 10.1177/0011128706295048

This article reports the findings from a study that investigates predictors of police willingness to blow the whistle and police frequency of blowing the whistle on seven forms of misconduct. It specifically investigates the capacity of nine policy and structural variables to predict whistle-blowing. The results indicate that two variables, a policy mandating the reporting of misconduct and supervisory status, surface as the most consistent predictors of whistle-blowing. Contrary to popular belief, the results also show that police are slightly less inclined than civilian public employees to subscribe to a code of silence.

1. What are predictors of police willingness to blow the whistle on coworkers’ misconduct?
2. How does the study corroborate or refute traditional notions of police subculture?
3. What are the implications of these findings for police departments?