Police Discretion Position Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Police Discretion Position - Essay Example One will find that it is very common throughout the country that virtually all of police work involves discretion, with the exclusion of mandatory arrests. Furthermore, it is not just the police officer who has to use discretion, but it is also the prosecutor deciding what charges to file or how the offender should be sentenced, and the judge who has the most discretion of all when it comes to setting the ultimate punishment at the culmination of the case. Therefore, it is unlikely that discretion is a myth. It simply must exist for the criminal justice system to function as is. Laws cannot be passed to cover every possible scenario, which makes the practice of using discretion necessary in law enforcement. According to Maggs (1992, pg. 1), "Few issues in criminal justice presently arouse the public's attention more than how much flexibility and discretion the police should have. Police departments and their officers traditionally have had broad authority to decide how to perform their work, and most people simply have trusted that they will exercise their powers in a professional manner. Yet, acceptance of the traditional arrangement has diminished, perhaps more in the past year than ever before. Disturbing incidents of misconduct, incompetence, and unresponsiveness have suggested to many a need for closer control over individual officers and for external constraints on departmental policy-making." There are a number of causes of discretion that should be taken into consideration. They are commonly grouped into three categories: offender variables, situation variables, and system variables. There are stern but true facts that surround each of these variables (APSU, 2007). The first group is offender variables. Juvenile complaints are taken less seriously than those made by adults. African Americans are more likely to receive excessive force or be arrested than other races. People who are polite and cooperative with police are treated better by them. Better police service is given to individuals with middle to upper income levels than other those in lower income brackets. Police also tend to handle situations involving individuals suffering from mental illnesses differently. Gender plays a role in how individuals are treated by police. Only some offenders are lectured and sympathized with by police (APSU, 2007). The second group is situation variables. Matters involving crime are taken more seriously by police than matters not involving crime. Police often overact to the presence of weapons or to resistance by an offender. Police actions are also affected by the type of property that is involved in a property crime and their decision whether or not to pursue any investigation on that crime. If a police officer initiates an act versus a citizen, it is more likely to be acted upon. When it comes to vice enforcement, visibility of the vice is the major factor in acting upon it. When the media, an audience, or witnesses are present, the police are far more likely to behave more bureaucratically than they would otherwise (ASPU, 2007). The final category is system variables.

Corporate Cash holding Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Corporate Cash holding - Essay Example The suitability of a new model must be determined before carrying out any tests owing to the complex nature of the measurements involved. The correlations will need to be carried out between loss dummy and dividend payouts as well as between loss dummy and firm size and positive relationships will need to be determined (see Appendix 4 for reference). This means that large firms are more likely to be without loss while also managing to pay dividends, an observation consistent with the results obtained by most researchers and providing evidence that the loss dummy variable can function as a proxy for financial restraints. In line with the other various researchers, we found out that firms which incur a loss, most of the times hold more cash than financially stable firms. Further examination into the correlation between loss dummy, the investment opportunity and cash flow volatility, we were able to found out that a negative correlation exists between loss dummy and the investment opportunity as well as a negative correlation between loss dummy and cash flow volatility. From this examination we can assume that financial constraints (loss dummy=0) have a positive relationship with cash flow volatility investment opportunity set (see Appendix 5). Financial constrained firms should hold some cash so that they are able to invest in investment projects which are profitable. The estimate models show us that cash flow volatility does in fact affect a firm’s cash holdings. Cash volatility differs from industry to industry and in order to depict this, we add a dummy variable, industry, into our model so as to determine the differences in cash holdings in each industry. The variable for industry, I, shall be used in out sample meaning that for the 32 industries listed in the London Stock Exchange, we would need to create 21(k-1) dummy variables. According to the results of the test, we can see that not all dummy variables are of significance. The ones that