Ethics in Criminal Justice
From the beginning of time philosophers, religious/spiritual leaders have all asked the same question. “How should I behave? How should I act? How can a person achieve a good and moral life?” These questions hall have several different answers. If you were to ask the 6.6 billion people on the plant you would get 12 billion different answers on how dose a person live a moral life. Many people look to ethics to define good and bad; right and wrong; righteous and evil, and it is hard to find any single theory that addresses all of these issues without finding contradictions within that theory. This issue becomes even more complicated when you try to apply these questions to a criminal justice professional. How should a Police Officer behave? How should a police officer act? How can a police officer achieve a good and moral life? What makes a good, bad, right, wrong, righteous or evil police office?
At this point it needs to be pointed out that ethics and morals are not the same thing. These terms are used interchangeably, and treated as the same word, but should not. Ethics simply, is the study of right and wrong, good and bad, righteousness and evil. Morals are the practice of living a good life. Living a moral life is implementing your personal and social principles. The issue over ethics and morals gets even more confusing when you put a code of conduct in the mix for criminal justice professionals. A code of conduct is a list of do’s and don’ts for police, probation, parole, and correctional officers
Just in asking these question I am sure every reader in right now considering the ethics and morals of police officers or maybe a specific police officer that the reader has had contact with. Most of you if not all are thinking about “bad cops” because these are the ones that we remember the most. Most of you are saying that cops need to treat everyone fairly, and be consistent with their actions. Let’s talk about being fair. I am speeding down the interstate and a cop pulls me over, he gives me a warning, do I think that is fair? Yes I do. Sobby is speeding down the same road at the same rate of speed, the cop pulls him over and gives him a ticket; is that fair? Sobby thinks so because he got caught speeding. I think so because I did not get a ticket who really cares what the cop did to Sobby. However, does Bouncy think it is fair? No, she does not because Sobby and I committed the same offense but I got off with a warning. It is not fair to Sobby regardless of what everyone thinks. So now that I got you thinking about fairness, does it really have any weight in living a moral and ethical life? Again it would depend upon who you talked to.
Criminal Justice professionals are held to a higher level of ethics than most people. Most people do not even apply their own ethical code of living to these hard working criminal justice professionals. Let me give two over-simplified examples of how this happens. The first being foul language. People, at least people in America use foul language as a matter of everyday dialect as a matter of course, and it would appear that no one really cares about the foul words polluting the air. Let a police officer use foul language and a complaint is filed with the police department of abuse. Am I condoning that police officers should use foul language? No, I am not, police officers must maintain a professional attitude in their interactions with the public but a bank teller is not going to loose their job for cursing at the convenience store. A police officer could. The second is looking into the Hedonistic ethical code of behavior. Hedonism says that a person should pursue the greatest level of pleasure while minimizing pain. If 2 consenting and single adults decide to have sex at work, or even after work no one is going to complain much if it does not bother them specifically. A police officer has sex at work even after work with someone they met during the duty day it is automatically assumed that the non-cop was forced to have sex and the police officer could face up 40 years in prison. The best example of people’s moral outlook on sexual conduct is the President Clinton-Monica Lewinski relationship. The world came out and said that it was no ones business on who President Clinton has sexual relations with. Yet when the Navy had their tail hook scandal the world came out screaming how immoral the Navy was.
The question of which moral principle and ethical theory that applies most to criminal justice officials, and how they should act and react is the focus of my current book. Over the next several chapters we will look into the different ethical theories of Aristotle, Plato, Bentham, Beccaria, Kant, and many others. By the end I hope to discover the perfect ethical theory to support the moral behavior of criminal justice professionals. I hope to also establish a moral principle for the police probation, parole, and the correctional officers to apply to their lives as the keepers of order.
At this point it needs to be pointed out that ethics and morals are not the same thing. These terms are used interchangeably, and treated as the same word, but should not. Ethics simply, is the study of right and wrong, good and bad, righteousness and evil. Morals are the practice of living a good life. Living a moral life is implementing your personal and social principles. The issue over ethics and morals gets even more confusing when you put a code of conduct in the mix for criminal justice professionals. A code of conduct is a list of do’s and don’ts for police, probation, parole, and correctional officers
Just in asking these question I am sure every reader in right now considering the ethics and morals of police officers or maybe a specific police officer that the reader has had contact with. Most of you if not all are thinking about “bad cops” because these are the ones that we remember the most. Most of you are saying that cops need to treat everyone fairly, and be consistent with their actions. Let’s talk about being fair. I am speeding down the interstate and a cop pulls me over, he gives me a warning, do I think that is fair? Yes I do. Sobby is speeding down the same road at the same rate of speed, the cop pulls him over and gives him a ticket; is that fair? Sobby thinks so because he got caught speeding. I think so because I did not get a ticket who really cares what the cop did to Sobby. However, does Bouncy think it is fair? No, she does not because Sobby and I committed the same offense but I got off with a warning. It is not fair to Sobby regardless of what everyone thinks. So now that I got you thinking about fairness, does it really have any weight in living a moral and ethical life? Again it would depend upon who you talked to.
Criminal Justice professionals are held to a higher level of ethics than most people. Most people do not even apply their own ethical code of living to these hard working criminal justice professionals. Let me give two over-simplified examples of how this happens. The first being foul language. People, at least people in America use foul language as a matter of everyday dialect as a matter of course, and it would appear that no one really cares about the foul words polluting the air. Let a police officer use foul language and a complaint is filed with the police department of abuse. Am I condoning that police officers should use foul language? No, I am not, police officers must maintain a professional attitude in their interactions with the public but a bank teller is not going to loose their job for cursing at the convenience store. A police officer could. The second is looking into the Hedonistic ethical code of behavior. Hedonism says that a person should pursue the greatest level of pleasure while minimizing pain. If 2 consenting and single adults decide to have sex at work, or even after work no one is going to complain much if it does not bother them specifically. A police officer has sex at work even after work with someone they met during the duty day it is automatically assumed that the non-cop was forced to have sex and the police officer could face up 40 years in prison. The best example of people’s moral outlook on sexual conduct is the President Clinton-Monica Lewinski relationship. The world came out and said that it was no ones business on who President Clinton has sexual relations with. Yet when the Navy had their tail hook scandal the world came out screaming how immoral the Navy was.
The question of which moral principle and ethical theory that applies most to criminal justice officials, and how they should act and react is the focus of my current book. Over the next several chapters we will look into the different ethical theories of Aristotle, Plato, Bentham, Beccaria, Kant, and many others. By the end I hope to discover the perfect ethical theory to support the moral behavior of criminal justice professionals. I hope to also establish a moral principle for the police probation, parole, and the correctional officers to apply to their lives as the keepers of order.
posted by fish at 10:59 AM
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