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Selective Police Enforcement

When critics of police want to prove that they are entitled not to be interfered with by the state, they cite much-publicized cases of police brutality, not least the Rodney King case (Dority, 1999). When they want to prove that they are entitled to the full protections of the state, they complain about police response time (Foreman, 2003). How, then, can police do their job properly?

Selective enforcement is the name given to the actions of persons in authority in the legal system to apply enforcement of laws on a discretionary basis. That is, the legal authorities may execute law enforcement differently on different individuals, even where different individuals may be charged with or may have committed identical crimes. Controversy over selective enforcement is hardly new, and the issue fronts that the controversy poses are as trivial as traffic tickets and as profound as the U.S. Constitution.

For decades, statistics have demonstrated marked imbalance between crimes and criminals convicted for them--an estimated ratio of about nine to one (Clark, 1971). Lacking manpower, funding, or technology to prosecute all cases appropriately, legal authorities make deals and otherwise temper enforcement practices. Other factors, such as demographics of persons most likely to be accused of crime, come into play. Those with limited economic or social power--the poor, the socially disadvantaged, the politically "unsafe," the minorities--tend to be more subject to enforcement than the rich and powerful are.

There is a view that police should ignore minor traffic infractions yet pursue major violators. When traffic laws are enforced, so the argument goes, it is because the police want to prevent accidents (Byrne, 1975) or because they trust their judgment of which violations are most serious (Batt, 1980). Those who get tickets wave the "quota" banner. As former attorney general Ramsey Clark remarks:

millions of citizens . . . will have ...

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Selective Police Enforcement. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 15:42, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1681592.html