Criminal Justice System: Basic Roles of Police Executives - Essay Example

Criminal Justice System Basic roles of police executives A police executive has basically two roles; one related to the internal matters and the other related to the external matters. The role related to internal matters deals with employees, tasks, rules, supervision, efficiency evaluation of the employees budgeting etc inside the police organization whereas the external role deals with matters related to law and order in the society. Both internal and external roles of a police executive are equally important. “As an administrator inside the organization, a police executive should concentrate on planning, organising staffing, directing and controlling the police organization”(Etter, 1995, p.215). Efficient utilization of the available workforce inside the organization is one of the major internal responsibilities of the police executive. It is not necessary that all the employees in the organization may have same vigil, intelligence and courage and therefore assigning of duties based on the smartness of each employee is necessary to keep the law and order intact. A wrong police official may create more problems to the department if he is posted at a wrong place. For example, a wrong police officer may give instructions for firing when a mob is getting violent. On the other hand, smart police officer may try to prevent the mob from violent activities using other means first and only at unavoidable situations he may use force. In other words, assigning of duties with respect to the personal characteristics is important in police organization. For a community, both internal and external roles of the police executive are important. If the police executive fails to execute his internal roles successfully, the community will be suffered. As mentioned earlier, wrong posting of a place official may create more problems to the community. So a community always wants the police executive to excel in both roles. “Politicians emphasize the external role of the police executive over internal roles. The politicians likely to leave the internal administration of the police department to the subordinate managers and to view the role as primarily externally oriented”(Etter, 1995, p.215). Politicians never bother much about what is going on inside the police organization. They wanted to see the law and order situation in a country intact. They know very well that the public will turn against the politicians if antisocial elements take control of the community or society. Moreover in elections, people normally vote for those political parties which were successful in establishing peace and harmony in the country. In other words, the future of the political leaders is lying in the hands of the police executives up to certain extent. So, they will give more importance to the external functions of the police executive more than his internal functions. The interference of politics in the functioning of police is not good for the society. Politicians will prevent the police officials from neutral functioning. Each political party may have their own interest and they will force the police officials to act in a particular way to safeguard their interests. In other words, police may not function independently or neutrally if the political party interferences are more. Thus, police may fail to ensure justice to all if the politics interfere in policing. My opinion about law enforcement “Law enforcement is the collective term for professionals who are dedicated to upholding and enforcing the laws and statutes that are currently in force in a given jurisdiction” (What Is Law Enforcement?, 2011). Many people have the opinion that law enforcement is the primary objective of policing. I strongly support the argument that law enforcement is only a method adopted by police for the protection of life and property and maintain order. Law enforcement means a system in which all the members of society streamlined to function in a particular way. It is the duty of the law enforcement to punish the violators of law. In order to find out the violators, police used Intelligence-led policing in the past. Intelligence-led policing was the most common form of policing used in the past. “It was originally articulated as a law enforcement operational strategy that sought to reduce crime through the combined use of crime analysis and criminal intelligence” (What is intelligence-led policing?, n. d). This approach gave more emphasize to law enforcement and disturbing interrogations were part of it. In fact police in the past committed several mistakes in the name of Intelligence-led policing. Many innocent people forced to suffer punishments because of the circumstantial evidences against them. The late awareness about the failure of intelligence-led policing forced the authorities to think in terms of community policing in order to polish the faces of policing. Community-oriented policing philosophy is gaining grounds at present. In other words, police is currently trying to work more closely with the communities to establish law and order. Community policing is the connection between police and citizenry, who work together on safety involving the public in the community. The design of community policing is to entail a more open relationship between the police and the public which gives the police a more proactive role in the community (Mirsky, 2009, p.1) People approached the police with some concerns in the past because of the fear of misuse of police power. In other words, police failed to get the cooperation from the public and they failed to establish law and order in many cases. Police interrogations were not so friendly and people tried to avoid is as much as possible. In order to avoid all these concerns about policing, community policing is encouraged in the current societies. In community policing, both the community and the police work together as friends rather than enemies for the establishment of peace and harmony in the society. Law enforcement cannot be considered as an essential part of community policing. For example, consider a person X suffered a bike accident and another person Y brought him to a hospital in critical condition. If the police disturb Y too much in the name of interrogation and law enforcement, Y may not repeat the same activity in future in order to avoid disturbing policing methods. In community policing, the police may not disturb Y too much in normal circumstances. They will ask only the necessary friendly questions to Y and appreciate him for the good work. In short, law enforcement is not an objective, but a method to establish law and order. References Etter B. (1995). Police leadership in Australasia. Federation Press, 1995 Mirsky I. (2009). Community Oriented Policing. Internet Journal of Criminology © 2009. Retrieved from http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Mirsky_Community_Oriented_Policing.pdf What is intelligence-led policing?(n. d). Retrieved from http://jratcliffe.net/research/ilp.htm What Is Law Enforcement? (2011). Retrieved from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-law-enforcement.htm Read More