Ethics Crime and Criminal Justice-CRJ-220

Ethics Crime and Criminal Justice-CRJ-220

A notable ethical issue in criminal justice is the so-called “Dirty Harry problem” – the use of immoral means to accomplish desirable ends by criminal justice professionals (Gaines & Miller, 2012). In many cases, it is hardly possible to resolve the problem using moral means and it might be necessary to use bribes, lying, sham to stop offenders or to prevent crimes. Furthermore, it might be not possible to resist criminals without resorting to immoral means (Gaines & Miller, 2012). On the other hand, the use of immoral means places criminal justice professionals on the same footing with criminals.

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In my case, ethical choice for this dilemma is the following. I believe that it is admissible to use immoral means to accomplish desirable ends for a criminal justice professional in the following circumstances: 1) the ends should be unquestionably desirable and failing to reach these ends should be unquestionably undesirable; 2) there should be no effective way of achieving the ends using only moral means (Gaines & Miller, 2012);  and 3) the ends should be so urgent that not using all available means to achieve them would be immoral. These conditions limit the use of immoral means to only urgent and important ends, and primarily rely on deontological principles (condition 1) and utilitarian principles (condition 2 and 3).

4. Using ethics in decision-making in criminal justice

Key theories of normative ethics – utilitarian ethics, deontology, virtue ethics and justice ethics – provide the background for ethical decision-making which can be very useful in ambiguous situations in criminal justice. Basing on my experience, it is possible to provide several recommendations for ethical decision-making in criminal justice.

First of all, I think that criminal justice professionals should follow several key deontological principles such as the primacy of law, the importance of protecting the common good and social order, etc. These principles are useful, for example, in the situations when individual rights and public protection come into conflict.

Secondly, I believe that utilitarian approach is quite efficient in the situations when other approaches fail to provide a way out of the situation or where they produce very inefficient decisions. In particular, utilitarian view can be used to assess the use of immoral means to achieve desirable ends provided that the person making the decision has enough information to be able to assess the consequences of own actions.

Thirdly, utilitarian approach also appears to be efficient for choosing reward and punishment, and balancing reward and punishment. Utilitarian approach to punishment allows to deter crime or at least to reduce the probability of crime, therefore targeting future crimes while other approaches address already committed crimes and might not affect future crimes. In addition, utilitarian approach is efficient for designing rewards and for increasing motivation of rewarded persons. These recommendations can be applied by criminal justice professionals when they have to make decisions in the presence of ethical dilemmas.

Ethics Crime and Criminal Justice-CRJ-220

Ethics Crime and Criminal Justice-CRJ-220