CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Changes in the Police Force Department

Changes in the Police Force Department

Introduction

The police department is one of the custodians of the monopoly of legitimate physical violence. One of the central points of this definition is the concept of legitimacy, and of legitimate force. Indeed, if the consubstantiality of the police force raises no objection, the actual use of force in turn raises many challenges. Since the police force is defined (in contrast to military force) in that it must not only be prescribed by law, but also accepted by the population. The law, generally, sits the legitimacy of force on two parameters: the nature of the situation (self-defense of self or others, or execution of a lawful order) and the proportionality of police response. Force employed by the police (again unlike the military) is thought as a defensive force as it is against a specific threat or violence that we allow it to appeal.

Force thought of as protecting the interests of society and the safety of persons or property, the police force therefore, maintains a close relationship with public opinion, insofar as it is estimated that the force is actually used to satisfy people security needs. This relation and strength of opinion leads to formidable problems.

The first is the rarity of force. Research conducted in the United States, a country marked by the considerable case of improper use of force, showing the scarcity of physical violence. A survey distributed to 6000 respondents in the United States indicated that from the thousand people who had contacted during the year with a police officer, only one in five hundred said to have suffered a physical restraint on the part of police, again most often limited to a seizure or a push by the policeman, and these declarative information are congruent with the majority of research based on observation of interactions that engage the police. However, this does not detract from the scarcity dimension intrinsically outrageous police force, if the public receives a single tear, and is entitled to demand accountability from the police, even in politics. Thus, it was shown that one of the major drivers of reform of police institutions but also of political crises in western democracies consists of cases of abuse or perceived abuse of force by police.

The examples do not end the problem of the relationship between the police force and legitimacy. For society, which judges the legitimacy of the use of force, it is not one and undivided. Research has shown that the police force, for it is uncommon, is exercised in particular against minorities, against parts of society rather than against everything. In the seventies in the United States, research abounded on the proportion of blacks killed by police about twenty to twenty-five times higher than the proportion of whites. Perceptions of minorities on the issue of violence by the police are more sharply defined than that of majorities, and this is the statement from one of the first surveys conducted by DuBois in ...