Order, Rationality and Silence: Some Reflections on Criminal Justice Decisionmaking (From Exercising Discretion: Decisionmaking in the Criminal Justice System and Beyond, P 186-219, 2003, Loraine Gelsthorpe and Nicola Padfield, eds. -- See NCJ-202489)

• NCJ Number: 202496
• Author(s): Keith Hawkins
• Date Published: 2003
• Length: 34 pages
• Sale Source: Willan Publishing
• Publication Format: Book (Hardbound)
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter examines issues related to how discretion is exercised in different parts of the criminal justice system and what constrains it.

Abstract

Criminal justice decisionmaking is a species of legal decisionmaking. Criminal justice decisions are made in the broader setting of a surround and within a context, or field, defined by legal organizational mandates. To focus on a single decision point, or on a single type of decision, risks excluding the social context in which criminal justice decisionmaking takes place, the field in which the decision is set and viewed, and the interpretive and classificatory process of individual decisionmakers. This final chapter focuses and reflects on issues arising from two questions: (1) how discretion is exercised in different parts of the criminal justice system and (2) what may actually constrain discretion. Issues discussed include: (1) how the analysis of criminal justice decisionmaking has tended to take the individual case and the individual decisionmaker as the primary unit of analysis when explaining decision behavior; (2) areas where most criminal justice decisionmaking research is silent; (3) the preoccupation with consistency in decision outcomes; (4) the sanctity of rules and systems of formal rules; and (5) criminal justice decisionmaking as a search for order and rationality. References