What is a discretionary action?

Discretionary action

Although the police publicly assert that all laws are enforced uniformly and universally and without any discrimination yet the fact are that the police go in for selective enforcement of criminal laws.

This discretionary and selective enforcement is of two kinds: one is based on the policy that the police do not enforce certain laws, even though the conditions these laws attempt to regulate do exist in the community.

For example, the running of gambling dens and of hotels which provide call-girls- The police adopt tolerant policies that allow, such laws to be violated with impunity.

The other is the policy of differential application of laws to different individuals, that is, the police often apprehend some, but not all persons whom they observe violating some law, or as is more frequently the case, those who have been reported to them by some citizens.

One common complaint against the policemen is that they practice discrimination against persons who come from villages, are poor and illiterate, and belong to underprivileged groups.

Cases of the police helping rich, educated, and influential persons involved in crimes in the matter of getting bail are numerous as compared to the arrested poor. Likewise, poor persons are arrested even on a slight suspicion while the arrest of well-to-do people is avoided.

Even when an identification parade is arranged, witnesses are given prior hints against the poor accused before their coming to police station, while in the case of the rich accused; many obstacles are created for witnesses.

The police, court, and prison records also show that the cases with regard to offences like vagrancy, petty thefts, excise offences, railway offences, and other such minor offences are significantly larger against the illiterate and the poor persons.

Even if it is contended that the poor are really more involved in these offences, the police tend to treat similar types of offences committed by the upper-middle and upper-class people more leniently.

Perhaps, the economic status of the offenders from upper groups helps them (the policemen) line their pockets. In any case, discrimination is seen to be practised when the police is informed of the crime from rich neighbourhoods.

The police are slow in responding to calls from localities inhabited by poor persons. Thus, decisions taken against the poor create suspicions in the mind of the public and attract the charge of discrimination and existence of bias.

Many police officials defend their discretionary actions on the plea that if they strictly followed rules, the judicial machinery will come to a halt and prisons would overflow and people and the media would complain of police highhandedness.

The argument is also advanced that Judicious enforcement of laws is needed to keep petty offenders out of the legal machinery while serious offenders do receive intensive attention, to doubt such policy best serves the interests of society but the problem arises when the discretion of the police is a biased one in favour of the rich and the influential.

If a son of a chief minister steals a car, he is admonished and released but if a son of a poor clerk or a teacher does the same thing, he is arrested and put behind bars. There should be some principles to guide the police in exercising discretionary powers.

Instead of taking decisions purely on a subjective basis, the policemen should try to be a little more objective so that people who suffer at their (police) hands are compelled to concede that the police are morally right in their activity.