Some factors in police discretion and decision making

This is a study of the exercise of police discretion as indicated by the responses of police recruits to a series of ambiguous, but common incidents. The situations are ambiguous in that they do not call for a clear course of action. The study measures the influence on the use of discretion of certain factors characterizing the police officers and the incidents themselves. The key finding is that the recruits most often seem to impose their own brand of justice based upon their judgement of what the community's expectations of the appropriate police response are. This judgement is most influenced by the accumulation of experience or “street wisdom”.