Through action, the criminal law “has attempted to establish those forms of conduct which its members desire to be declared criminal” (Goldstein, 1963 , p.141). However, these laws are often expressed in such general terms that the definitions of crimes are vague, and it therefore becomes difficult for police officers to try to interpret and enforce this type of legislation. The second point to make in favor of police discretion is that total enforcement of all laws is fundamentally impossible. Police departments do not have the necessary manpower or sufficient resources to respond to every call for service. Additionally, they cannot arrest everyone who has ever committed a crime and prepare them for prosecution. A third advantage of using discretion in law enforcement concerns variations in the severity of offender behaviors. Every police encounter with an offender is different, so officers must consider contextual and mitigating factors as well as the offender themselves and not just the illegality of the offense. This is therefore where discretion comes in handy in assessing an offender's culpability. Not everyone can be treated the same as professional criminals; there must be exceptions for individual circumstances, which involves police discretion.