Suchergebnisse

In this paper we consider some of the ethical challenges inherent in the regulation of discretionary police power. Discretion is central to police policy and practice, but it also provides a level of freedom that opens up the space for injustice and inequity, and this is seen most vividly in recent debates about unfairness and racial profiling in the distribution and experience of police stops in the US and UK. How to regulate discretionary power is a challenging question, and this is especially so in the context of practices like stop-and-search/stop-and-frisk. The ability to stop people in the street and question them is central to policing as it is understood in many liberal democracies, but under conditions of unfairness and questionable efficacy ? when the application of this particular police power appears unethical as well as ineffective ? one can reasonably ask whether the power should be dropped or curtailed, and if curtailed, how this would work in practice.

When do police officers feel confident in their own authority? What factors influence their sense of their own legitimacy? What is the effect of such 'self-legitimacy' on the way they think about policing? This paper addresses these questions using a survey of police officers working in an English constabulary. We find that the most powerful predictor of officers' confidence in their own authority is identification with their organization, itself something strongly associated with perceptions of the procedural justice of senior management. A greater sense of self-legitimacy is in turn linked to greater commitment to democratic modes of policing. Finally, we find that this sense of legitimacy is embedded in a matrix of identities and cultural adaptations within the police organization.