SOC 3750 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Erving Goffman

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 3750
• Professor: Patrick Parnaby

Document Summary

Discretion the ability to decide on the basis of one"s own judgement. Arriving late or arriving on time complete paperwork or procrastinate lay charges or release with warning scholarly focus on selective enforcement . Enforcement as formulaic, need presence of violation and next sequence of events follow circumstances external to event are ignored image of consistent enforcement is valuable. Think goffman on front stage, organization constructs performance, backstage is discretion and want to keep these separate. Other orgs. present masks of efficiency and competence. Purpose of law (deterrence) is achieved without enforcement. Decisions are function of organizational style and how police see their role vis a vis the community. Who cares? arrest isn"t just a function of criminal event, it"s also a function of the norms and values underlying organizational styles, but incident level factors remain important. Discretion as function of incident level factors i. e. , what transpires during civilian/officer encounter.