Discretionary Decision Making

Modern criminal justice has evolved into a complex and loosely coordinated set of systems characterized by formality in rules and bureaucratization in organization. From a system composed of amateurs and extremely local and community-focused prior to the 18th century, criminal justice systems transformed into ones with significant growth in size, professionalism, and specialization. The codification and expansion of substantive and procedural criminal laws in the last two-plus centuries has increased pressures to use limited resources efficiently, to be selective in enforcement, and to ...