Lawful and Effective Policing

I believe psychopaths should not be treated in the same way the justice system would treat a normal person. From the original 1941 definition of psychopathy, a psychopathic individual is egocentric and exhibits a flat range of emotions, designating him mentally ill (Gonzalez et al., 2017). Therefore, the psychopath may understand that they might have done wrong but lack the emotional feeling. Currently, the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code rejects evidence of psychopathy to support a defence for non-responsibility because the act was committed consciously. However, I find the rationale problematic since the institution consents deny the fundamental principle that emotion is essential for moral judgment and behaviour. Being morally insane, psychopaths are incapable of acting as responsive moral agents. Judging from Jerod Murray’s 2012 case by which the Oklahoma resident pleaded guilty for shooting Generro Sanchez, the insanity plea can be justified. Murray’s medical examiner established that his patient was not guilty by reason of insanity because he agreed with his college freshman friend (the victim) to test “what it feels to kill a person” and went ahead to kill Sanchez (Jacewicz, 2016). Similarly, the release of John Hinckley Jr., the man who attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, showcases the need to consider the insanity plea more seriously. The Hinckley case rekindles the M’Naghten Rule, on account of which the convict of an earlier attempt on British Prime Minister Robert Peel was acquitted. Therefore, I feel that as long as the defendant is proven to be psychotic, the “not guilty by reason of insanity” should be considered, and insanity acquittal offered. However, I believe it would be proper for such victims to be sent to mental facilities rather than being released back into the public. More so, I would recommend that the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code does not religiously stick to the DSM for its legislation, especially for the case of mental disorders. In my evaluation, rightful policing is the most promising approach to rightly evaluating the US law enforcement system. Unlike traditional lawful policing that depends on the actual lawfulness of Police conduct, rightful policing considers procedural justice and fairness of police misconduct. That is to say, rightful policing has better odds of winning Police compliance with the law, reducing crime rates. More so, since rightful policing does not evaluate police merely as crime fighters, it is better placed with providing remedies for cases such as Henry Louis Gates Jr. in Cambridge, 2009 (Smith, 2018). In such a case, the 911 response officer arrested Gates, the House's owner, who had reported suspected burglary out of his (the officer) racial prejudice. Besides, Rightful policing has better chances of measuring law enforcement, police conduct, and effectiveness because it offers intuitive strategies to address law enforcement problems' real-time challenges. For instance, the approach recommends a tactic known as “hot spot policing,” whereby officers are deployed in proportion to geography and data (Tryon, 2015). That way, crime can be substantially reduced without spreading it to other areas, as conventional policing does. In fact, the approach undoes the bad publicity Police have earned by randomly stopping and frisking people on the streets without a warrant. More importantly, rightful policing believes in empowering federal law enforcement agencies, particularly the Police. Notably, rightful policing seeks to lend the Police more legitimacy and dignity in carrying out their constitutional roles, which then builds the trust they have in their work and the citizens. Additionally, rightful policing lobbies for the proper interpretation and application of constitutional law to seal the loopholes in the currently practiced lawful policing. For instance, rightful policing observes that constitutional law fails to uphold the quality of the Police officer’s intention. Instead, it “places a premium on the police officer’s intention when she decides to exercise her discretion to engage someone,” which does not prevent the officer from being rude to the public (Meares, 2013). Instead, rightful policing invokes the Fourth Amendment to establish a social and constitutive Police framework that promotes the cops’ positive self-identity and common publicness. Of the six critical missions identified by the National Strategy for Homeland Security, domestic counterterrorism emergency preparedness and response stands out as the most important. One reason domestic counterterrorism demands priority is the far-reaching impacts it has on the other mission areas. Unless internal security threats are mitigated, protecting critical infrastructures and key assets, defence against catastrophic threats, and border security quickly becomes compromised. In his September update on the State of Homeland, Acting Secretary Chad Wolf reiterated the pressing need to sharpen focus on specific domestic terrorism, citing its importance in overall national security (DHS, 2020). Furthermore, the RAND corporation considers domestic counterterrorism most important because it handles the widest variety of security breaches (Jenkins, 2020). Also, considering that most domestic terrorist attacks unfold much more rapidly than incidences pertaining to other sections of the DHS’s critical missions, they deserve to be given top priority. Besides, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) observes that of the four critical mission areas, risks in domestic terrorism have been on the rise at the highest pace as compared to other sectors. The rise is mostly attributed to increasing insurgence that builds on existing gaps in social justice and representation to exploit national security. Jones et al. (2020) note that since 9/11, far-left extremists such as Salafi-jihadists have taken dramatic progress to polarize local American rebels to exploit loopholes that promise to legitimatize terrorist activities in the name of ‘social justice.’ In part, the CSIS attribute the escalating concerns in domestic security to exponential improvements in chemical and communication technologies. Besides, domestic counterterrorism requires prioritizes attention because it faces legislation problems. Schoeberl & Mottola (2019) note that one of the biggest challenges domestic counterterrorism units, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), is the lack of well-defined laws to intervene in some of the most apparent risks of Homeland security. For instance, the FBI is limited in its investigations into hate groups because hate is driven by prejudice, and prejudice is not an offense hence not prosecutable in a court of law. According to the FBI, crime is defined as “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity,” which limits its operations into organized hate groups (Schoeberl & Mottola, 2019). With such legislative constraints, the DHS needs to pursue avenues to give the counterterrorism units more power. The DHS should also pressure the Department of Justice to ease the backlog of court cases on domestic terrorism that hamper timely justice progress. Likewise, domestic counterterrorism is very important because terrorists are advancing their tactics faster than law enforcers can ever imagine. Domestic counterterrorism is thrown into jeopardy as the terrorists move from sophisticated weapons to locally improvised gadgets and materials with equal power. Recent technologies such as 3D printed guns are making the detection of potentially destructive weapons more challenging. More so, terrorists have opted for non-traditional means such as driving trucks into crowds and ghost guns. All in all, domestic counterterrorism is crucial because it relatively central to the Department of Homeland’s security operations. 

References 

American Law Institute: Model Penal Code . Philadelphia: ALI, 1962 

Department of Homeland Security. (2020, September 9) “ 2020 State of the Homeland as Delivered by Acting Secretary Chad Wolf.” Retrieved https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/09/09/2020-state-homeland 

Gonzalez-Tapia, M. I., Obsuth, I., & Heeds, R. (2017).” A New Legal Treatment for Psychopaths? Perplexities for Legal Thinkers.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry , 54, 46-60. 

Jacewicz, N. (2016, August 3). “Does A Psychopath Who Kills Get to Use the Insanity Defence?” NPR . Retrieved https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/08/03/486669552/does-a-psychopath-who-kills-get-to-use-the-insanity-defense 

Jenkins, B. M. (2020, October 26). “Paths to Destruction: A Group Portrait of America's Jihadists — Comparing Jihadist Travelers with Domestic Plotters.” RAND Corporation. Retrieved https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3195.html 

Jones, S. G., Doxsee, C., & Harrington, N. (2020, July 30). “The Tactics and Targets of Domestic Terrorists.” Centre for Strategic & International Studies. Retrieved https://www.csis.org/analysis/tactics-and-targets-domestic-terrorists 

Meares, T., L. (2013). “The Good Cop: Knowing the Difference Between Lawful or Effective Policing and Rightful Policing – And Why It Matters.” William and Mary Law Review. 54(6), 1865 – 1886. 

Schoeberl, R., & Mottola, A. (2019, November 13). “Domestic Terrorism – Defining a Real Threat.” Domestic Preparedness Journal. Retrieved https://www.domesticpreparedness.com/resilience/domestic-terrorism-defining-a-real-threat/ 

Smith, J. A. (2018). “Learning from a “Teachable Moment: The Henry Louis Gates Arrest as Media Spectacle and Theorizing Colour-blind Racism .” In Media and Power in International Contexts: Perspectives on Agency and Identity . Emerald Publishing Limited. 

Tryon, T. (2015, June 7). “Tryon: ‘Rightful Policing’ strategy.” Herald Tribune. Retrieved https://www.heraldtribune.com/article/LK/20150607/News/605199269/SH