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Ethical dilemma within the criminal justice system
Ethical dilemma within the criminal justice system
Ethical dilemma within the criminal justice system
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Ethical Challenges in Criminal Justice
Nicholas Underwood
Armstrong State University
In this paper, I shall an analyze what I believe to be the most challenging ethical issues in criminal justice as they relate to the courts, police and corrections aspects of the field. Starting with the police, I believe the most challenging ethical problem facing the police is the part of police culture known as the “blue curtain of secrecy” which refers to the phenomenon of cops being loyal to each other even to the point of not exposing a cop who breaks the rules (Pollock 2014). The reason that I believe this to be the most challenging ethical issue facing the police is that the unwillingness to expose cops who break the rules makes
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it much harder to stop cops from breaking the rules in the first place. Thus, it could be said that many of the other ethical problems that involve the police are allowed to exist by the “blue curtain of secrecy”. Part of the reason the blue curtain exists is because of the isolation that officers often feel from the rest of the community, which leads them to be loyal to their fellow officers instead of the community, especially if they distrust the police administration (Pollock 2014). This loyalty in of itself isn't a bad thing, indeed, it is needed for the police organization to function since officers depend on each other in life or death situations (Pollock 2014). But the “blue curtain of secrecy” is misapplied loyalty. The biggest problem with covering up the wrong doing of other officers is that it can lead the public to not trust the word of officers, as happened in the OJ Simpson trial (Pollock 2014).
The fact that public trust of police officers has fallen to a low not seen since the Rodney King trial should be taken as a warning by police officers around the country (Walsh 2015). After all, the OJ trial happened right after the Rodney King verdict, and the idea that a guilty man might get off because of a lack of trust in the police today is something that officers should consider for the sake of the future of American policing.
Next comes what I believe to be the most challenging issue facing the courts, which would be prosecutor misconduct, particularly through the use of false evidence such as jailhouse informants (Pollock 2014). The model rules forbid prosecutors from entering evidence that they know is false, but often times prosecutors will argue that they didn't know that the evidence was false, thus making the knowing standard less than effective (Pollock
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2014). According a 2005 study by the Northwestern Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, jailhouse informants were implicated in about half of the 111 death convictions that had been exonerated at that time (Balko 2015). Jailhouse informants are a prime source of prosecutor misconduct because it is easy to manufacture and gives the prosecutor plausible deniability as to the falseness of the evidence (Balko 2015). The fact that jailhouse informants are given incentives for their testimony only encourages them to lie so that they can get the reward. Jailhouse informants wouldn't be acceptable under an utilitarian ethical system, or any other teleological system concern with the consequences of an action, due to the number of false convictions caused by them (Pollock 2014). Many prosecutors probably justify their use to themselves using an ends justify the means argument, thus making this a sort of noble cause corruption, the prosecutors using bad means to get a conviction (Pollock 2014). Evidence and expert testimony based off junk science is a related form of prosecutor misconduct and is used for many of the same reasons, namely that expert testimony and supposedly scientific evidence is taken more seriously by juries than is deserved (Pollock 2014). The biggest ethical issue facing the corrections system, in my opinion, is the prison industrial complex, which lies at the root of many other issues facing the corrections system.
A big problem with private prisons is that their main goal is to turn a profit, thus they take as many prisoners as they can in order to be paid as much money as possible for housing them while spending as little money as possible while doing so, which tends to lead to all sorts of abuse and negligence in the name of saving money (Filipovic 2013). Abuse in prisons tends to fall into three types, as defined by Bomse (Pollock 2014). These types are purposeful abuse, which includes excessive force, negligent abuse, which includes denial of medical care and failure to protect prisoners, and systemic abuse, which refers to prison polices that are meant to save money and cause harm as a result (Pollock 2014). All three types of abuse are common in for-profit prisons, who do not want to spend the money needed to provide adequate safety and treatment of their prisoners, nor spend the money needed to hire and train worthy employees that won't abuse their charges (Filipovic 2013).The usual justification of the prison industrial complex is that it provides jobs for many Americans, the idea being that the employment of the corrections workers provides a service to society that outweighs the harm done to the prisoners (Pollock 2014). This is something of a twisted version of the greatest good for the
greatest number idea behind utilitarianism, however, one could argue that the abuse and recidivism rate of private prisons harm society more than the jobs that they provide benefits it (Pollock 2014). Therefore, private prisons do not meet the ethical standards of utilitarianism, especially since the negative consequences of private prisons would be unacceptable to the teleological basis of that ethical system. In conclusion, I consider these issues to be the most important to the criminal justice system and it's future. References Balko, R. (2015, May 8). End the use of jailhouse informants. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/05/08/end-the-use-of-jailhouse-informants/ Filipovic, J. (2013, June 13). America's private prison system is a national disgrace | Jill Filipovic. Retrieved April 21, 2016, from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/13/aclu-lawsuit-east-mississippi-correctional-facility Pollock, J. (2014). Ethical dilemmas and decisions in criminal justice (8th ed.). Belmont, California: Wadsworth ;. Walsh, J. (2015, June 19). Poll: American Confidence in Police Hits 22-Year Low. Retrieved April 19, 2016, from http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/06/19/poll-confidence
In conclusion, for profit prisons do just that, they look for ways to make a profit by cutting corners and providing less than adequate living conditions for inmates. This imposes a significant risk for many things such as, extreme overcrowding in the private facilities, lack of medical care, lack of nutritious meals, and decrease in the number of staff that are in the facilities. The staff get don’t get paid as much as they should for the amount of hours they put into the facilities also causing risks for the safety and security of the
Private prisons are correctional institutions ran by for-profit corporations. They claim to cost less than prisons ran by the state, while offering the same level of service. In fact, the Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison corporations, states that their business strategy is to provide quality corrections service while offering a better value to their government partners at the same time making a profit (CCA 2010). However, opponents of private prisons say they do not save states money because of their hidden cost. At any rate, more than a few states have found private prisons to be advantageous. For one reason, many states are facing massive deficits and are l...
Each position in criminal justice holds power and responsibility, and therefore, it is very important that said people in those positions do not abuse it. Unethical behavior in the criminal justice system takes away trust and respect from authority, and as a consequence, the law is more easily disregarded if the people lack faith in the system. It can, also, contribute to crime and/or cause citizens to not report crimes. Society should have indubitable confidence in the men and women of the criminal justice system. Law enforcement officers violating even the smallest rule could lead to more serious infractions. Syed (1997) states, "Every instance of corruption bends or violates a rule or law and, similar to the granting of impunity, may contribute to an officer's perceptions of the law as applying differently to different people and increase the ease with which violations can be rationalized." Having less than ethical persons in our criminal justice system can lead to a weakened society, the ruining of lives, and even add to crime.
The goal of private prisons is to be more efficient and runs cheaper than the average public operated prisons. In a public prison, it cost a lot of money for the inmates to be taken cared of, so the plan was to have a prion that is not own by the government, but instead was owned by a owner who would guarantee to run their prison facility for less money, and still provide the same qualities and care as a public prison. However, that isn’t the case now. Private prisons are falling short on actually fulfilling those aspect and requirements. In fact it is relatively hard to determine if there is any difference in the qualities between a private facility and a public facility. The only difference so far is that a private prison is not own by the government and therefore it is more of a business own by an owner who most likely runs...
Of course, that would be the logical thought to have, but as it turns out, it 's a little more complex than that. Expectedly, “the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.” (Adam Gopnik) In other the words, more inmates meant more money for the company. Over the last thirty years, the Corrections Corporation of America, a company whose main source of income comes from “having as many [prisoners] as possible, housed as cheaply as possible” saw the incarceration rates increase to “500 percent to more than 2.2 million people.” (grassroots) Well, let’s not get carried away, one could argue that the spike in incarceration rates can’t possibly be the private prison’s fault. They exist only to control and house the prison population, not to create it. Well, one would be right, the private prisons are not directly responsible; they are not directly making more criminals but what one doesn 't realise is that they play a pretty critical role in the
Companies such as Corrections Corporation of America & GEO Group are selling their services as a worry-free solution to dealing with the incarcerated population, while saving money in the process. Some of the tactics private prisons use to save money are understaffing, not training staff, lax security measures and even allowing cable TV versus hiring more guards. These tactics do not work, as researchers from the U.S. General Accounting Office show “no substantial evidence” was found in proving that for-profit prisons conserve taxpayer dollars. In Arizona, prisons were privatized with one stipulation; it must save money. The state’s own data contradicted the idea, with the per-inmate cost in private prisons as high as sixteen-hundred dollars greater per diem, or three and a half m...
In this paper, the ethics of police management is examined in the framework of organizational justice and how management strategy effects police corruption through employee perception and proper employment strategy. Organizational Justice as studied by Muchinksy (2008) and cited by Crow, Lee and Joo (2012) is the concept of how employees perceive their treatment by management. (Crow, Lee, & Joo, 2012)
Private prisons in the United States, came about in the early 1980s when the war on drugs resulted in a mass wave of inmates, which led to the lack of the prison system’s ability to hold a vast number of inmates. When the cost became too much for the government to handle, private sectors sought this as an opportunity to expand their businesses through the prison industry. Since the opening of private prisons, the number of prisons and inmates it can hold has grown over the last two decades. With the rising number of inmates, profits have also substantially grown along with the number of investors. But what eventually became a problem amongst the private prison industry was their “cost-saving” strategies, which have been in constant debate ever
Police ethics are extremely important because ethics are the typical of “fair and honest conduct” (pg 460). People may have a different definition of what is fair and what is honest, and there are different circumstances where officers may not be able to be honest; such as covert investigations. Society in general determines what our ethical standards and moral principles are. Individual morals vary among all of us as they are what we as an individual consider to be right or wrong. We also have morals that are set by society. These are what we as a society consider to be right or wrong and may go hand in hand with individual morals. Morals change as society and people change, therefore we as a country have to adapt to what the changing morals are.
The chair of the parole board Robert has the responsibility of calculating the risk associated ensuring the inmates released back into society are not reoffenders. The first element that Robert has to take into consideration is the overcrowding of the prisons. The external forces of the court system is looking for the correctional units to expand or increase the mandates that the parole uses to release inmates. There is controversy surrounded in this case where the advocates are making demands for the expansion of the parole eligibility to release more inmates than expected.
As the number of incarcerated individuals grow, so has grown the need for correctional personnel. Throughout the growing numbers, the public has become aware of what goes on in correctional facilities between both groups, most of the time leaving a negative and worrying impact on society. Making headlines from time to time, Arizona is no stranger to controversy regarding their correctional system. Some of the main ethical issues that AZ corrections is currently facing are; discrimination, sexual misconduct, and corruption.
A Critical Assessment In defining police ethics, ethical policing and police ethics are not synonymous or interchangeable connotations to or for one another. Aside from establishing a police role independently from establishing any definition of ethics or police ethics, the semantics tend to complicate the defining process. Some of these complications include, but are not limited to, sociological aspects, psychological conditions, or philosophical reasoning. Examples of sociological complications include historical, political, cultural, or economic aspects. Some psychological examples include one’s ability to discern sociological implications from other implications; namely, the condition of post-traumatic stress disorder, hydrophobia, or even weary dreams. Lastly,
Ethics play a huge role in a police officers line of work. Since police are given such a high degree of trust and authority, it can unfortunately be very easy for an officer to fall into some unethical behavior. This can range from just minor acts that are frowned upon, to actual downright illegal activity. Even though there are a countless number of acts and behaviors that can be considered unethical, in the following paper I will focus primarily on those incidents involving police officers who steal for their own personal gain, and discuss my position on the issue.
Shown in this image is the amount of days 3 or more people are killed by police in red, killings of 2 people by U.S. police in orange, and yellow shows when 1 person was killed by the police in the U.S. White boxes indicate when no one was killed by police. As you can see, white boxes are the least. There are just 14 days in the entire year that someone was not killed by a police officer. This image shows how often ethical decisions are required by police officers, that is, everyday.
Police decisions can affect life, liberty, and property, and as guardians of the interests of the public, police must maintain high standards of integrity. Police discretion concerning how to act in a given situation can often lead to ethical misconduct (Banks 29).