Pros And Cons Of The Exclusionary Rule

Increasingly in today’s growing population centers and with a technology minded society, the risk of invasion to one’s privacy seems almost an absolute given today. The federal government and public law enforcement’s use of technology to fight crime today has significantly elevated from the days of wiretapping a traditional home or business phone line or a good ole fashion stake out by the detectives. However, as the American population has grown, so has American crime rates. Furthermore, as police departments struggle to recruit high quality applicants, and faced with increasing fiscal constraints, so too has the perception that crime is growing at a rate in which state and federal law enforcement cannot keep up. Highlighting this perception

Therefore, reasonable concern exists for additional attention by legal and constitutional scholars in addressing legal procedure and precedence when it comes to private security personnel in search and seizure cases and application of the exclusionary rule. The exclusionary rule was established to prevent the use of unlawfully obtained evidence from being utilized against the accused in a court of law. However, because the established constitutional laws and bill of rights does not always extend to private security officers, opportunity exist to use the “fruit of the forbidden tree”. Moreover, the exclusionary rule is only extended to state action, creating increased risk to both private citizens and private security officers (Caffuzzi,

The public function doctrine is based on the principle that the state cannot avoid its obligations under the due process clause by delegating to private persons the authority to deprive people of their property without due process of law" (Caffuzi, 1995). Therefore, when security officers perform services for the state or federal government, they become agents of the government and are then held to the same constitutional restraints. Areas where private security personal my find them acting on behalf of the government are when they perform such security functions as controlling access and entry control points to federal facilities or securing critical transportation infrastructure. Due to the critical demand to secure key infrastructure and the lack of federal resources, private security firms are often relied upon to perform these functions, putting them in a direct position to act as an extension of federal agencies. Since, many of these security personnel work under exclusive contractual agreements with the federal government, this may increase the likelihood for the courts to hold the private security officer to the same standard as an agent of the state or federal government. Thus, there is an increased need to properly educate and train security officers filling