Criminal Justice Administration Ethics

As each new member of a police department officially becomes a sworn member, friends, family and other members of the public gather as they speak an oath. The oath these officers take, promises their commitment to ensure the safety of the public they serve. This means more than protecting civilians from individuals who may stray from the law, but to also ensure the protection of basic human rights. Police and other public servants are given a great deal of trust and power, what they do with it is based on the ethics they choose to uphold. In this paper we will look at why it is important for these justice professionals to study ethics.

Ethical Dilemmas are a pressing issue within any law enforcement or law agency the power that people have in positions such as these force them to share an equal or greater amount of reasonability. Ethics is defined as “the branch of philosophy that typically deals with values relating to human conduct with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions”. This definition of ethics courtesy of Webster dictionary shows just how complex the intricacies of ethics are and how major dilemmas might negatively impact departments for instances lawyers are plagued with ethical dilemmas on a day to day basis such as Lawyer advocacy, conflict of interest, Professional

The criminal justice system is one of the most important components in the public service system. Since it is a system that citizens encounter daily it would be most beneficial for those who are employed to behave as ethical leaders. Leadership skills and ethical behavior are both parts of the duties of any officer serving the law. Often employees are placed in quick decision situations that can have fatal outcomes if not handled properly. By ensuring that all officers of the law have a set of functioning ethical leadership skills can not only develop a well-rounded individual, but also builds the relationship between the community they serve to protect. The police and other officers of the law have great discretion and power over an individual which makes having responsible, ethically behaving persons on the front lines even more important. With the right training and education, ethical officers can set the bar and improve the quality of life of the community they serve as well as other officers.

My first interviewee officers jack Davidson, patrolman from Somers point police department. When interviewing Patrolman Davidson, I found the following to be his impressions of the police force in general. Officer Davidson spoke of why ethics and character are important in the field of law enforcement. His response was that ethics and character go hand in hand. In law enforcement it seems that there are so many reasons to do the right thing. The reasons began with public opinion and also should include their influence on the youth who will be growing up to be citizens of the city, state, or country. If a police officer does not behave with

Probation serves as the most frequently used sentence for those convicted. This is evident when you consider that the United States justice system oversees nearly 7 million people. Over half of those, a staggering 3.7 million people, are on probation with another 840,000 on parole (Rabuy, 2017). With those individuals representing the largest percentage of the American corrections system, it is important that we learn as much as possible about probation in order to improve the success of these programs. Probation involves a set of conditions that the probationer agrees to adhere to in exchange for remaining in the community. Typical conditions include a waiver of the offenders fourth amendment rights, maintaining employment or school

Professions are guided by codes of ethics to aid them in performance of their duties and to ensure maintenance of high standards of conduct. Police officers are faced with a maze of obligations in the performance of their official duties. The “Law Enforcement Code of Ethics” and “Canons of Police Ethics” were created to make explicit the conduct considered appropriate for police officers and to guide them in the performance of their duties. Although police have these guides, many are faced with ethical dilemmas, also known as a moral dilemmas. This mean the officer is challenged to make a decision which sometimes conflicts with societal and personal ethical morals and values and provide no

5. Should ethics training be offered as an on-going process for law enforcement officers? * 5. “On-going ethics training is always a good idea. We train with our guns and cars every year. Couldn’t hurt to make ethics required every year too.” (Shonda Ellis Duncan, personal Interview 2011) 6. Do the interviewees feel that education and/or training in ethics would reduce incidents of police corruption? * 6. “Training may reduce corruption incidents. It’s a nice idea. A wise man once told me though that power corrupts. I believe this to be true. If you think of yourself as a superior to everyone else, there is no law, no training or in-service that can fix that kind of ugly. I don’t know if someone can be “trained” to be humble. Either you are or you ain’t. I think this is true for cops. You’re either a good one or we appreciate your interest in law enforcement. Of course a good cop has to maintain order. You must have respect to be successful. An officer’s presence alone demands it. One must remember the spirit and the letter of the law though and hold it dear as it is precious. “(Shonda Ellis Duncan, personal Interview 2011)

Every time an innocent person is exonerated based on DNA testing, law enforcement agencies look at what caused the wrongful convictions. There are many issues that contribute to putting guiltless lives behind bars including: eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, imperfect forensic science, and more (Gould and Leo 18). When a witness is taken into a police station to identify a suspect, it is easy for their memories to be blurred and their judgment influenced. This can lead the witness to identify a suspect who is actually innocent. Flawed forensic science practice also contributes to wrongful imprisonments. In the past, analysts have been inaccurate due to carelessness, testified in court presenting evidence that was not based

Nearly six decades later, six states had passed laws regarding probation. By 1910, “thirty-two more states had passed legislation establishing juvenile probation” (Probation Historical Roots, 2013). Twenty years later, forty-nine out of fifty states had a juvenile probation law (Probation Historical Roots, 2013). Today, as defined by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “probation refers to adult offenders whom courts place on supervision in the community through a probation agency, generally in lieu of incarceration” (Community Corrections (Probation and Parole),

According to Webster’s Dictionary, ethics is defined “as the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation” (Merriam-Webster Online). This concept is prevalent in the world of police work since police officers are supposed to be the “good” in whatever is considered a “bad” situation. Many police departments offer training in ethics during the time in which a cadet is in the police academy and after officers are put on the streets, which is called in-service training. It is the hope that while this training is available to officers, that they hold a basic code of ethics within themselves which

Write an 800- to 1,000-word paper in which you analyze the relationship between ethics and professional behavior in the administration of criminal justice. Explain the role of critical thinking with regard to the relationship of ethics and professional behavior. Include in your paper a proposal for a seminar in ethics training for law enforcement officers. In your proposal choose five areas of ethical conduct that will be stressed in the seminar. Explain why you chose those areas and what the expected benefits of the training will be for both officers and the community.

Among the other challenges mentioned is the absence of a strong leader whom police enforcement officers can emulate and look up to for inspiration. This is confirmed by Edward J. Tulley who said that a person must do the right thing always even if nobody is looking. The sad thing however is that there is nobody now who is willing to set a positive example.The lack of training or formal education is also a reason why law enforcement officers commit misconduct. I believe that no person would intentionally do something that is wrong. The problem however is that when people are faced with an ethical dilemma their lack of understanding of better ways to deal with the situation sometimes impels them to make a wrong decision. The task now is to make ethics a part of the training for law enforcement officers so that compliance with the code of ethics becomes a matter of instinct. The absence of a stringent hiring and selection process is also a barrier for compliance with high ethical standards. The conduct of interviews and psychological testing are important because there are people whose psychological profiles do not match with the profile of that of a police officer. While it is true that there are some people who can be educated and trained to become ethical police officers there are some whose personalities do not match that of a police officer

In this country we are seeing an increase in ethical violations in the field of law enforcement. I will go into detail about some of the main ethical issues we are seeing today and what can be done to prevent such acts from happening. When one officer is being unethical it has a huge effect on how the public views law enforcement as a whole. Many officers go undetected for a long time before getting caught, but an officer committing ethical violations will have their day it’s just a matter of time. In order to improve this growing problem we must first understand why there is such a problem in the field of law enforcement.

Law enforcement officers deal with criminal offenders, some who are more dangerous than others . Officers may be sometimes assigned to field work that has a high crime ratio or even assigned to institutional settings, where there may be a high risk of violence. Results of working as a law enforcement agent can be very stressful and risky at times. Ethics in criminal justice provides us with the knowledge to get resources to help us make moral choices during challenging situations involving ethical issues in everyday operations.Moral rules and ethics are a very import concept in the criminal justice field.

According to my interviewee SA Robinson, ethics and character are important in law enforcement as they play a significant role in building public trust which is critical in addressing crime in the country. Public confidence gets lost when police officers and other law enforcers engage in criminal activities and unethical behaviors. Loss of public trust towards the police undermines interactions and communication between the police and the people. The trust loss, in turn, hinders the police from obtaining relevant information from the public that would help them address crime. The SA also stated that ethics plays a critical role in guiding an officer’s interactions with criminal suspects (Banks, 2009).