Police Manuals and Discretion

¶ … Attitude and Personality:

Most police organizations have in-depth policy and procedure manuals, rules and regulations, or standard operating procedures. Since all organizations are formed for the achievement of specific objectives, they have well-designed structures and clearly established functions. Police organizations are generally highly interactive and dynamic since police officers need to deal with various situations. These officers are expected to work always in accordance with legal provisions despite of the kind of situation they are dealing with. However, for policemen to effectively handle the situations based on the law, they need to have specific and clear instructions for handling the situations.

Police manuals are developed and made available to officers to enable police officers to function lawfully and discharge their various duties effectively ("Indian Police: An Introductory and Statistical Overview," n.d.). In-depth policy and procedure manuals, rules and regulations, and standard operating procedures act as guidebooks to police officers when they are dealing with various situations to ensure they act lawfully and effectively. In essence, these manuals should contain information that helps law enforcement officers to deal with varying issues and situations emerging from law and order conditions, crime management, and other professional issues or challenges.

In light of the varying kinds of situations that modern police deal with, these types of manuals are still necessary in contemporary police organizations. They are important in today's police organizations because law enforcement officers need to be familiar with administrative and organizational subjects when handling the evolving crime issues. Moreover, the manuals help police officers to deal with issues related to maintaining law and order and crime management as they address the increased rates of crime.

Police Discretion:

Police officers need to use sound discretion. Discretion is actually a legitimate and omnipresent component of modern policing even though its extent and limit are poorly understood. However, discretion is subjective. There is no rule or regulation that can deal with every probable task police officers can carry out. Nonetheless, it is important to allow police to use discretion they need but at the same time staying within the restrictions of department procedure and the laws. This is primarily because of the likelihood that exercising discretion may contribute to corrupt, arbitrary or unethical behavior.

As a criminal justice manager, I would allow police officers to utilize the discretion they need but at the same time staying within the limits of department procedure and the laws through structuring its exercise based on administrative guidelines. This will help deal with the modern view that police can misuse their needed discretion resulting in unethical or corrupt behavior. The administrative guidelines would provide the yardstick for evaluating and testing decisions by police officers when exercising needed discretion. By acting as the yardstick for testing decisions, the guidelines will lessen the degree of dependence on arbitrary, improper or irrelevant factors (Bronitt & Stenning, 2011, p.319).