ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the individual and situational determinants of arrest discretion behaviour. One of the reasons to separately deal with the data analysis of these two determinants is the difference in methodology than that for the study of the organisational, subcultural and environmental factors. The studies on individual factors examine the characteristics such as gender, experience and position and their influences on officers’ response to a situation including discretionary behaviour. The analyses are based on the study of the variables from within the sample respondents itself. For the situational determinant, having regard to the Indian context, the socio-economic survey of the offenders has been conducted to find out if there is any correlation between the poor and marginalised being as such and their more likelihood of being arrested in comparison to their affluent counterparts under similar circumstances and whether the former category of respondents is less likely to exert their legal rights.
