Role of Police and Community Expectations

Conflict

The government, including the criminal justice system is meant to be answerable to people, however, there are instances where the law and the people will may conflict. This can be due to evolving social preferences that lawmakers have failed to catch up with or it can also be due to different communities having different standards. Resolving the conflict between doing what is required by the law and serving the will of the people is in many cases a black-and-white decision.

The police should always make sure that they enforce the law in every situation. However there are some cases which we can term as being minor and not too serious. They should have the ability of selectively enforcing laws that the public wants to be enforced. Even though the police are required to strictly enforcing law and order there ought to be some exceptions. There are instances where a law might not be popular among the people in an area. In such a case the police should ignore such offenses since it is obvious that the individual might not even know what they are being charged about. There are also some offenses that the public is aware of and hence the police should concentrate on such offenses as opposed to the ones that are not popular.

The police or prosecutor should have the power to decide against charging a particular offender if it is clear that the local population does not want that person prosecuted. This is because the people might know something about the individual that the police or prosecutor might not know. Incase the people are all for an individual not to be charged then there has to be a good reason behind this and hence this should be put into consideration before a decision to change an individual is made. For instance there was a young man who was caught picking items from a retail store and just walked out without paying. The owner of the store ran out following him stating he had stolen something. Luckily there were police on patrol nearby and also some passers-by who were attracted by the commotion. When the boy was asked why he did that he just kept quite. The people told the police and store owner not to take any action against the boy since he was unstable mentally and needed medical attention. In such a case the police should be given the power of deciding not to charge the boy.

The police should enforce laws differently from one community to the next depending on the standards expressed in a particular community. This is because each community has its own norms which the people in that area live by. Therefore the police should also enforce laws depending on the norms of that particular community and not lift or force laws onto a community which can be against their norms. The community should have an influence over he local police since people want to live in a community with order and abiding by the laws stipulated. Therefore the community can be of great assistance to the police when it comes to enforcing laws. This can be achieved through working together to achieve the common goal of enforcing law.