Controlling Police Conduct: Alternatives to the Exclusionary Rule

Abstract

Expansion of the exclusionary rules through recent Supreme Court decisions is believed by many to be the most effective means of controlling police misconduct. The authors contest this view on two grounds. First, the police are not the sole, nor even necessarily the principal, offenders against whom the exclusionary rules should be aimed. Responsibility for the perpetuation of illegal police practices must instead be apportioned amongst all branches of the criminal justice system.1 Second, practical alternatives, or at least supplements, to the exclusionary rules do exist. Procedural rule-making by police departments themselves provides a solution which is both comprehensible to the policeman on the street and sufficient to satisfy the citizen's constitutional guarantees. In addition, police self-education can be served by police review of cases abandoned at the prosecutorial level to discover patterns of impermissible police conduct. Although this article necessarily centers on possible controls of police conduct, the authors feel compelled by their own allegiance to the police craft to disclaim, at the outset, any implication that they consider the police as the primary villains in a system where everyone else is carefully observing the rules.