Ethics and Proffesional Behavior in Criminal Justice Administration

Ethics and Professional Behavior in Criminal Justice Administration
Name
Institution
Introduction
When the subject of ethics is discussed, there are several words that are used. These may include; honesty, integrity, responsibility, courage, good character. To be precise, ethics involves defining and achieving what is referred to as right or wrong, good or bad in regard to moral obligation and duty (Byers, 2002). In the contemporary world, the topic of ethics has gained popularity especially in the field of law enforcement. It is expected that the criminal justice officer should portray the highest level of ethical standards in a community. However, community confidence in the law enforcement officers as well as in law enforcement institutions has significantly eroded. It is evident that a number of the policing officers are honest and hardworking and committed to offering their services to the public with integrity as well as with the highest canons of ethical behavior. Despite a rising obligation to integrity within law enforcement agencies and police departments, a portion of officers misuse and/or abuse the public trust (Beech, n.d). This paper is aimed at discussing ethics in relation to the behavior in criminal justice administration system.
Putting into consideration the nature of criminal justice and especially policing within the contemporary society, the law enforcement officers’ behavior has been put under scrutiny (Byers, 2002). The field of criminal justice has been scrutinized over the years for behaviors that have been questionable on ethical grounds. For instant, the case of search and seizure involving fishing expeditions preceding Mapp versus Ohio, police misconduct through flooding the media and also the fallout from what was referred to as Knapp Commission report (Allen et al, 2006). It is therefore clear that cognitive processes as well as socialization play part in starting and proliferating unethical and unprofessional behavior. However, other than the role played by sociological and psychological forces in producing unethical and unprofessional behavior among the police officers, personal choice also plays a critical role (Byers, 2002).
It would be unreasonable for one to argue that the whole field of policing is permeated with graft and is corrupt. However, one wonders whether occurrence of unethical incidences could be attributed to the lack of training in the field of ethical decision making. Turano (2000) pointed out that the execution of ethical training for the rank as well as file has not been prioritized. In addition, Pollock (2004) argued that it has been perceived that morality and ethics are declining and the opportunities for teaching morals have been eliminated. A similar observation was made by Scaramella where he discovered that even the recruits who have been through college education were not exposed to ethics courses during their training (Allen et al, 2006).
Appropriate behavior are created and enforced. Various agencies have the duty of training their employees on how one is or is not expected to behave. When a gap is left by failuring to train, the employees may have difficulties in making reliable decision hence leaving a loophole for unethical, improper or unprofessional actions. Just like any other form of training, ethics training should be considered paramount. For instant, an agency cannot assign a gun to an officer who has not been trained on how to handle the weapon. It is therefore equally important to offer the skills essential in making professional and ethical decisions (Allen et al, 2006).
Critical thinking is paramount in explaining the relationship between ethics and professional behavior among the policing officers. As argued above, training is crucial in instilling skills that guide one in acting ethically and professionally. However we cannot rule out the role played by an individual’s choice in acting ethically or unethically. Some theories have been propounded to explain the misconduct in the policing system. The esteemed rotten barrel theory 1 suggests that unprofessional and unethical behaviors among the police do not occur at individual level but at department level. This means that unethical conduct can be traced among the top administrative officials who then corrupt their juniors through giving orders. On critically analyzing this suggestion, one may argue otherwise since it is possible to find ethical conducts among the senior administrative officers as well as unethical junior administrative officers. On the other hand, if the entire department was corrupted by seniors who implement their corrupt acts through ordering their juniors, there would be no incidences of ethical and professional acts among the officers at various levels (Allen et al, 2006)
The theory of rotten apple theory 2 best explains that the unethical conducts are due to few “rotten apples” within the policing department and that inappropriate conduct is isolated to only some individuals. The rotten group theory has a different suggestion where it argues that a group of officers could be united in execution of an unethical behavior. For instant, ...