Channeling Police Discretion: The Hidden Potential of Focused Deterrence

• In Event: Beyond Deterrence: Strategies of Focus and Fairness

Abstract

The breadth of the criminal law and the unfettered discretion it creates are among the most significant challenges facing American criminal justice today. These twin problems have a particularly corrosive effect on policing, where they lay the foundations for many of the most prominent flashpoints for community anger, including intensive police surveillance, arbitrary enforcement, racial discrimination, and the cavalier use of pretextual authority. This paper considers the potential of the so-called "focused deterrence" strategy to counteract these dangers by channeling police discretion along more principled routes than it usually follows. Although the focused deterrence model is most commonly understood as a powerful strategy for combating crime, I argue that it should also be understood as a powerful strategy for advancing the rule of law. At its core, the focused deterrence model aims to make the exercise of discretion more deliberate and transparent, redirecting slack criminal justice authority towards the most significant community problems rather than squandering it on the haphazard enforcement of whichever violations of the law happen to come to official attention. By establishing deliberative forums for accomplishing that goal, well-executed focused deterrence initiatives help to combat the arbitrary and excessive use of overbroad legal authority.

Author

• David Thacher, Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan