Abstract
In the 1960s Jerome Skolnick described the main problem of police in democratic society as one of effectively maintaining order while adhering to legal norms that emphasize constraint on the initiative of police authority. Contrary to what was and continues to be a common theme in American images of justice, that law and order are complementary, Skolnick argued that one necessarily is in conflict with the other. To emphasize the rule of law was to place the rights of citizens to be free from undue interference of public officials above society’s right to maintain order. To emphasize order was to place society’s need to be free from crime problems above the rights of individual citizens.
The police in democratic society are required to maintain order and to do so under the rule of law. As functionaries charged with maintaining order, they are part of the bureaucracy. The ideology of democratic bureaucracy emphasizes initiative rather than disciplined adherence to rules and regulations. By contrast, the rule of law emphasizes the rights of individual citizens and constraints upon the initiative of legal officials. This tension between the operational consequences of ideas of order, efficiency, and initiative, on the one hand, and legality on the other, constitutes the principle problem of police as a democratic legal organization.
(Skolnick, 1966:6)
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Weisburd, D., Uchida, C., Green, L. (1993). Raising Questions of Law and Order. In: Green, L., Weisburd, D., Uchida, C. (eds) Police Innovation and Control of the Police. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8312-3_1
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