Philosophical and Practical Approach for Balancing Issues
Assignment 3: Philosophical and Practical Approach for Balancing Issues
Due Week 10 and worth 200 points
Before writing your position statement on Philosophical and Practical Approach for Balancing Issues, you should read Chapters 1 through11 in your textbook. Then, research at least three (3) peer-reviewed articles about individual rights, morality, ethics, individual rights, duty, or codes of conduct for criminal justice professionals.
Write a three to five (3-5) page paper in which you:
1. Create a philosophy and approach for balancing the issues of individual rights and the public’s protection. Provide one to two (1 to 2) examples illustrating how you will balance the two issues in your own career in law enforcement.
2. Determine a philosophy and approach for balancing the use of reward and punishment in criminal justice. Provide one to two (1-2) examples illustrating how you will use this philosophy in your own career.
3. Select a philosophy and approach that addresses the use of immoral means (e.g., torture or lying in interrogation) to accomplish desirable ends. Provide one to two (1-2) examples illustrating how you will use this philosophy in your own career.
4. Explain what you believe the Ethics of Care and Peacemaking Criminology presented in your textbook should mean for law enforcement professionals.
5. Support your position statement with three (3) relevant and credible references, documented according to latest edition of APA. (Note: Do not use open source sites such as Ask.com, eHow.com, Answers.com, and Wikipedia.)
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA format (latest edition). Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
Include a cover page developed in accordance with the latest edition of APA, including a running head, page number, the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page, revision of the previous assignment, and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.
The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:
Analyze the issues pertinent to codes of conduct and / or the ethics of duty.
Recommend ways to use ethics to improve decision making in the criminal justice system.
Analyze various philosophical approaches for ethical decision making, and the effectiveness and limits of each approach for making ethical choices.
Analyze the ethical issues involved with balancing means and ends in the criminal justice field.
Examine the key elements of virtue and character.
Examine reasons for and effective ways to apply critical ethical thinking to criminal justice issues.
Use technology and information resources to research issues in ethics and leadership in criminal justice.
Write clearly and concisely about ethics and leadership in criminal justice using proper writing mechanics.
PHILOSOPHICAL AND PRACTICAL APPROACH FOR BALANCING ISSUES
Student Name
Institution
Individual rights and public protection.
This is a major theme in criminology. This is manly dealing with the offender rights and community safety and also public protection. Much of what is written in the public protection arena discusses these important issues. In most cases, it is difficult to comprehend for those who feel we should live in a democratic, free society. First, the human rights act have attempted to provide a more human side to the human justice system. Enshrined within the legislation is the protection of individual freedoms. Any individual who have committed a crime is still afforded rights and these are seen depending on your own perspective as either a good or a bad element of the criminal justice system process. The other issue is one of right to safety. In most of the debates on public protection is the argument that it is important to restrict the individual rights of the offender in order to provide adequate protection to the public (Maguire & Okada, 2011).
It is obvious that some individuals or groups of individuals that wish to see harm done on other member of the community. Most individuals accept that there has been some tradeoff between individual rights and public safety. Most of the countries in the world are controlled by democratically elected governments (Maguire & Okada, 2011). This is because we have put all our faith in our public protections systems. In recent years however an individual’s freedom can be restricted simply because their behavior fits into a particular classification system that deems them dangerous. What is of greater is that evidence to support to thee labeling of groups is inherently flawed lacks systematic application across jurisdictional boundaries has not been systematically analyzed and is in most cases accepted uncritically. In most instances in the UK, the opinion of caution is assumed given little concern and more concern on punitive stance towards individual freedom, restrictive sentencing and offender management practices. All these are justified by the public protection (Maguire & Okada, 2011).
Public protection is also risk and dangerous. This is because the issue of risk and dangerousness of offenders hence one of the most important issues discussed in public protection. In 1992 Beck introduced the neo-Marxist perspective examining the macro level risks that the modern capitalist and scientific communities have created through the rapid technological changes. Therefore the society is open to all type of risks. The discourse of risk and the risk avoidance strategies that have been developed in an attempt to avoid the dangers that have been efficiently brought has also become embedded within the criminal justice system (Harrison & Beck, 2003).
Hence, the issue about the level of risk of harm an individual could cause is a question that has become very generic and opaque (Maguire & Okada, 2011). Hence we as the public are exposed to risk and dangerousness of offenders. A good example that explains individual rights and public protection is child abuse. Individual who have children tend not to worry so much about the risk of child abuse but those individuals who have got children will always conceptualize on the level of risk and incorporate their fears and concerns about their children on daily basis as they control their daily practices.
In general, risk is relative and how we deal with it always depends on our own experiences and intellectual and knowledge. In law, therefore individual rights and public protection are very important issues (Nash, 2006).
Our criminal justice system should be in a position to balance the individual rights and public protection in such a way that neither the public nor the individual feels disadvantaged. In public protection rules and regulations should be set aside and observed by every individual. When every individual is aware of what he or she is supposed to do, then the public is protected as everyone does as required by the law. Punishment to offenders should be one that respects the individual rights of the offender. He should be arrested and jailed if found guilty but upon imprisonment the rights and freedom should be retained. This respects the individual rights and ensures public protection (Nash, 2006).
Reward and punishment is atoll that is used in behavior modification. The ideal of behavior modification being used to determine its rewards and punishments was first introduced by social scientists in the classical school of criminology (Vito, 2006). Irving by ringing a bell and presenting food to his laboratory dogs subsequently, he found out that the dogs were conditioned to expect food by the mare ringing of the bell. Skinner carried this idea of Irving further and developed on enforcement. The reinforcement theory asserted that behavior is learnt from sources of reinforcement in the subject’s environment. Of importance was that behavior could be elicited on the basis of rewards (positive reinforcement) or punishment which is negative reinforcement. In criminal justice, behavior modification is commonly associated with token economic strategies in collectional facilities. A token economy is a type of a behavior that utilizes payments to elicit a...