@article{ref1,
title="Measuring police attitudes toward discretion",
journal="Criminal justice and behavior",
year="2003",
author="Wortley, Richard K.",
volume="30",
number="5",
pages="538-558",
abstract="This article describes the construction of two scales to measure police attitudes toward the selective enforcement of the law. The Service-Legalistic scale measures police discretion along a flexible-inflexible continuum. Service-oriented police advocate the use of discretion to help solve social problems; legalistic police oppose discretion because it interferes with their duty to enforce the law equitably. The Watchman scale examines the use of discretion to maintain control. Watchman-oriented police simultaneously ignore minor offenses and call for greater powers to deal with serious crime. Service-related discretion was found to negatively correlate with authoritarianism and the belief that crime is caused by the individual dispositions of offenders; watchman-related discretion positively correlated with authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, and a belief in individual crime causation.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0093-8548",
doi="10.1177/0093854803254805",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0093854803254805"
}