Street-level policy is immediate and personal while large programs operate at distance

Evidence

Police officers have considerable discretionary power over those they investigate and arrest. In his informative field study, Albert Reiss (1971) found that police tend to apply the law selectively, according to their personal standards. The role of moral disengagement in police enforcement practices remains to be explored. Similarly, state prosecutors have discretionary power over which cases become capital ones. It would be of interest to examine whether those prosecutors who frequently call for the death penalty differ in levels of moral disengagement from those who are reluctant to try murders as capital cases and prefer a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2067 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Mass-processing management displaces the client-orientation goals that justify agencies.; Street-level law enforcement applies the law selectively according to officers’ personal standards — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2067

Related

• Street-level law enforcement applies the law selectively according to officers’ personal standards (similarity 0.93)
• Police and prosecutors apply written law selectively through personal discretion. (similarity 0.88)

Broader Connections

• Street-level law enforcement applies the law selectively according to officers’ personal standards #expands (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2067