Barry Lam’s Less Rum’s Rum’s Better People: Cases for Discretion, the biggest part of his examples of real-world and modest cases here sees how he explores the rules and prudence of law enforcement.
Two different forms of discretion were identified in law enforcement. Selective discretion is the discretion to determine whether sub-laws should be enforced in certain cases. Interpretation discretion is the ability of law to determine (or how) it applies to a particular case. In writing his book, he conducted interviews with police occupations and district attorneys who learned about their use for forms of discretion.
One case of selective discretion is being considered early in the book, held in the Low Incoma community in Uilontown, New York. Young teenager Calleed Joey is caught stealing an item by the store owner and calls the police. The officer soon learns that a young teen stole bretta, peanut butter and submilk – he and his brother had no food in the house and had not eaten for a few days. They sympathize with him and try to arrange with the store owner. At first, the owner is angry and claims he will arrest and charge the young teen. But the officer makes a deal, agreeing to what he was doing to them, framing it to the owner of the store, and instead makes the boy work. I’ll clean up the parking lot, wash the windows, have the total items be shelved and get them back for the items he stole. Eventually, the store owner will be released. When officers return in the evening to check in the situation, they receive this report from the store owner.
“Sorry,” the owner said. “It’s going to find a subthing for him to need food because you’re working so hard and was stolen from you.
According to [Officer] Mike, Joey, did the same thing every week, went to work, cleaned the parking lot, cleaned the windows, stacked milk boxes in the back so that the driver would come and pick him up. In exchange he received brie, peanut butter, milk and other groceries enough to feed his family.
“I paid a couple of dollars an hour, and although it wasn’t relatively much, he wasn’t arrested,” Mike says proudly.
This kind of selective discretion may also violate a variety of other rules regarding child labor, employment, and minimum wage laws.
Hypothetically, a Subnozzy lawyer, or a Jabbertian lawyer, can file a Sub’s complaints about a shopkeeper who “exploits” a hungry child for work.
If such a person reports the owner of a store, it would not be a good citizenship. I hope that the relevant bureaucrats in charge have the wisdom and discretion to see other ways. Otherwise, reports of this type of busy person may be made to speak up in advance among the shopkeepers, forcing shoplifters to pay the workers’ crimes, insist on arrest, and preventing anyone from making it worse. If the submitted authority had no discretion to continue it, and therefore the submitted authority had to place an arrangement of the kind that was suspended, it is a flaw, not a virtue of the bureaucratic state.
According to two officers involved in this case, Mike and Dave, it highlights selectively modest virtues.
Officer Mike said, “What you see is the young kids and they want to arrest them all. You’re sub-sam sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-s
“When you’re just starting out, you’re still learning to work. You can do a lot in the world, you deal with a lot of people, so you’re getting a book,” explained General Dave. “When you’re at my age, there’s a better way to get a sumone to get a sumone to get a sumone right,” I continued.
In contrast, interpretation discretion eats play when it is ambiguous rather than its need. All this kind of discretion is butidable – craft rules that create accurate and clear boundaries that apply to possible events are impossible tasks. As an example, most states have spun restrictive laws – these are precise definitions. However, not all road safety laws are necessary.
Let’s consider the basic speed method, almost the image of event states. The basic speed law states that no one drives faster than is safe for current road conditions. If the spered limit is 55 years old, but you drive a 55 during a blizzard when the road is not salted or tilled, you are violated and you can receive a ticket under the statute… whether you are driving faster than safe is a SAF call.
Lamb argues that almost every law in the book is open to broad interpretation, using both selective and interpretive discretion using inevitable facts. As a result, you must always create secrets to interpret the scope and content of a particular rule or law.
If the police department “want to interpret vague laws so that they think many acts are criminals,” it is not Leson’s politics than the opposite, “interprets vague images and excludes many acts as possessive.”
A commitment to By-Book Legalism is not only actually imposed, but also helps to examine obstacles to how to use this boring discretion simply by applying legalism.
There is no overly and overly false cover-up by officers and prosecutors than a blatantly wrong, controversial, or general decision “just follow the law.” If the law gives requirements, discretion, not only permits it, it simply follows the law, and that is not the case for police officers or prosecutors. Those with selective or interpretive discretion will not passively comply with the law. You should always choose which law (or what interpretation of law) should be followed, which laws to ignore.
So how should we make decisions in enforcement and application of law? In the next post we will see Lam forth in that territory.
