Email from SMT -
The future of policing as a profession depends upon whether discretion can be put to good use. Discretion involves making personal contributions, judgement calls, exercising autonomy, and individual solutions. It's about the courage to make your own decisions, to have a personal input and to follow your conscience. Discretion is not just about making "safe" choices, or being "soft". It's about making good virtuous choices by habit or the wisdom that comes with experience.
Police discretion is an essential part of the job of a police officer. It can offer substantial benefits to the community by allowing us to respond flexibly to their needs, to engage in quality-of-life policing, and to reduce crime.
The use of discretion is not a new concept but will become increasingly important with the introduction of Community Resolutions. Community Resolutions will give victims the chance to tell offenders the real impact of their crime, to get answers to their questions, receive an apology and some form of reparation. It gives the offenders the chance to understand the real impact of what they've done and to do something to repair the harm. Community Resolutions holds the offenders to account for what they have done, personally and directly, and helps victims to get on with their lives.
I like the idea of Discretion and before this email from SMT I wonder what I had been doing. I hope this shows our bosses are not slaves to those stats gathering monkeys in government, and I personally like it. This is what the public want as well.
This is a bloody cheek when you think of all the bullying for Detections and Performance Management which they have inflicted upon us over the last few years. Does this represent a climb down? If so, why are the same senior officers still in place? Great Blog, I have placed a link on mine.
ReplyDeleteYou do realise that they are using all that smokescreen about discretion to mask what they really mean.
ReplyDeleteTranslated post.
"Discretion is really cool. Anyway regardless of that - you won't actually have any. What you will have is another lengthy paperwork process to go through, at the end of which in a very few suitable cases we will let you do a community resolution. (Obviously the various processes we will make you go through will mean that by the time we let you have the "discretion" to carry out the resolution so much time will have elapsed that the offender will be unaffected and the victim will have thought they had successfully put it all behind them and moved on)
Cynical? Me?
Tang0