Ethical Dilemma of State and Policies - Essay Example

Ethical Dilemma Ethical Dilemma The plus its ities controls numerous aspects of society in various ways. This connectsto the domestic and foreign policy, economy, cultural life and science and, in some way, to health, social security and education (Braswell, McCarhthy & McCarthy, 2002). One of the most significant roles of the state together with the government is the safeguarding of human rights and freedom, safeguarding of interests of businesses and organizations and fighting crime. These problems/issues are solved by all municipal and state authorities and numerous community organizations (Gaines & Miller, 2008). Nevertheless, there are agencies that are established exclusively to manage activities in the field of law. These are mainly law enforcement agencies or commonly known as police organizations. They are developed to execute the main duty of the state - the safeguarding of human rights, legitimating the welfare of organizations, as well as the society at large (Braswell et al., 2002). Police officer activities refer to activities of unique state agencies that are carried out through applying legal effects in line with the law, with a view of protecting or safeguarding the rights plus the interests of the citizens, businesses and organizations, society and state, law and order and security. Police officers face widespread dilemmas and a number of them concern ethical issues (Braswell et al., 2002). A majority of the main ethical dilemmas that police officers face are bribery, gratuities, corruption, whistle-blowing and loyalty, use of deception, undercover tactics, discretion, deadly force, sex on duty and other misconduct, brutality and others (Gaines & Miller, 2008). However, this paper will mainly focus on corruption, which is considered to be one of the most rampant evils affecting the police organization. Corruption is a single phrase, which describes the use of rights and delegated power by officials for personal gain, contrary to the moral and laws precepts. The phrase is usually utilized with regards to political elite and bureaucracy (Pollock, 2008). Law enforcement corruption is a fairly widespread occurrence, but this ethical dilemma is overly common particularly for police officers. Corruption by the police is a specific form of police misconduct aimed at obtaining financial benefits and other private gains or job enhancement for not pursuing an arrest or investigation (Braswell et al., 2002). Police officers comprehend that their main role is to cater to the community, safeguard life and property, innocent people against deception, weak people against oppression, violence and intimidation against disorder and civilians, and to acknowledge the constitutional rights granting people justice, freedom and equity (Gaines & Miller, 2008). Faced with these ethical dilemmas, police officers do not identify how to deal with them and are normally tempted to overstep their constitutional powers. Police officers are vivid symbols of law enforcement, whom citizens meet each and every day (Pollock, 2008). There is a strong urge to talk about corrupt behavior by police officers, which are part of the ethical dilemmas. Police officers have many chances to benefit personally from their authority and status as law enforcement officers (Braswell et al., 2002). Police officers are not immune to feelings of mistrust (Pollock, 2008). Normally, these fact-based cases are channeled towards their bosses. For instance, when promotional tests are rooted in race instead of merit, public safety is compromised both through the presence of incompetent work force in positions of authority and due to a decrease in the morale of the line-personnel. Safety-vital police officials demand that their peers work continuously at a very high level of performance and with an overly high level of interpersonal trust among the cohorts (Gaines & Miller, 2008). The Knapp Commission, which studied corruption in the New York City Police Department (NYPD) distinguished between two types of corruption: meat-eaters (aggressively misuse police powers for individual gain) and grass-eaters (accept payoffs that the police work present to them) (Raines, 2010). Below is a classification of a number of corruption types committed by police officers. They include corruption of authority, opportunistic theft from arrestees, as well as crime victims or their corpses, kickbacks, shakedowns, protection of unlawful activities, direct criminal activities of police officers themselves and internal payoffs (Gaines & Miller, 2008). Since corruption is a huge ethical dilemma, there is need to talk about the reasons that make people officers corrupt. A majority of the experts concur that the key reason of corruption is due to the high imperfections found in political institutions, which offer both internal and external mechanisms of deterrence (Braswell et al., 2002). Furthermore, there is grounds to deem that some objective circumstances provide a considerable contribution such as (1) misunderstanding or ignorance of the law by citizens, (2) ambiguous laws, which officials do not bother to straighten or they overstate the correct payment, (3) the non-presence of mechanisms of interaction, (4) dependence on the principles and standards, which underlie the role of the bureaucracy, (5) professional lack of skill of the bureaucracy, (6) fairly low income in the public sector contrasted to the private sector, (7) slightly low level of engagement of citizens pertaining to matters of state control, (8) regulation of the economy by the government, (9) the reliance of the population from government officials, as well as a state monopoly on certain services, (10) separation of the bureaucratic people from the rest and finally (11) inflation and economic instability (Braswell et al., 2002). These are all major cases that lead to corruption from the law enforcement (Pollock, 2008). Police corruption is overly harmful to any country where the act is rampant. Empirical findings show that corruption causes (1) inefficient distribution, as well as expenditure of public funds and vital resources, (2) uselessness of economic flows from the financial point of view, (3) time loss because of the challenges or obstacles placed by the government, which generally reduce the effectiveness of the state apparatus, (4) lowering the quality or worth of public service, (5) misuse of global help to developing nations that severely diminishes its effectiveness, (6) raise in social inequality, (7) raise of organized crime and (8) reduction in public morals among others (Gaines & Miller, 2008). To date, there are no identified techniques in pedagogy plus management, which can guarantee that someone will be perfect for the police officer or law enforcement role. Nevertheless, there are many nations with overly low levels of corruption (Pollock, 2008). In addition, the acknowledged historical cases where actions intended to reduce corruption has worked include Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden and Portugal. It significantly tells in favor of the endeavor that mechanisms to fight corruption exist (Sharps, 2010). Apart from the dissolution of the countrys government, there are other key ways to fight corruption, which will be discussed below (Raines, 2010). Ways to Mitigate the Ethical Breaches Once people comprehend how ethical dilemmas are framed in the law enforcement context, it becomes easier to form mechanisms to eradicate the ethical breaches of the acts conducted by police officers (Braswell et al., 2002). Remedies to reduced these ethical behaviors on the part of the law enforcement officials start first with the selection and hiring of qualified persons (Gaines & Miller, 2008). Those who lead key police departments should no longer look for "work-arounds" of least hiring standards so as to employ a member of an exceptional interest group (Braswell et al., 2002). Ethics Training Professionalism, leadership and ethics are deemed so vital to key nations that have been able to mitigate corruption and they are the first learning principles offered to new police recruits in their academies (Gaines & Miller, 2008). However, they also do not consider learning as a onetime event, instead, it a recurrent process of review/assessment and reinforcement or implementation. Hence, ethics training should persist all through an officers work life (Gaines & Miller, 2008). This training should be made both informal, e.g., team meetings and briefings, which are presented in structured formats. Apart from taking part in the ethics training offered by the training colleges, first line police supervisors, as well as middle management, should receive training in the assessment of ethical breaches, as well (Braswell et al., 2002). However, no amount of training is ever enough if the department leadership does not set an ethical-leadership model of themselves (Pollock, 2008). The upper management of each and every police agency should understand tthe power they have on their juniors through the decisions they make (Braswell et al., 2002). Decisions like discipline, policy development and promotions should inculcate a fair culture in the organization. Making Ethics Training Real Ethical training should be made feature-intensive and it should also deal with the human emotions involved instead of ignoring them (Gaines & Miller, 2008). For example, in a case where a police officer hits a prone and cuffed suspect, who has been provoking the officer, it is sensible to comprehended that police officer was emotionally angered (Hess, 2008). As humans beings, we do not have an on and off switch for emotions, thus it is hard to control our emotions (Braswell et al., 2002). Therefore, rather than just informing a police officer that he or she should control his or her use of force, feature-intensive training should incorporate explaining to an officer that they will face such situations, which will make them so angry that they will just want to hit their suspects and this is completely normal (Gaines & Miller, 2008). However, the police officer should know that when the moment comes, they should acknowledge the feelings for what they are - emotional and physical responses to the chemicals in their system - and they need to think before they act (Braswell et al., 2002). Through offering this information at this level of comprehension, the police officer is being educated and prepared for the inevitable realities that he or she will experience one day in his or her duty (Gaines & Miller, 2008). Additionally, from an ethical viewpoint, the police leaders are acknowledging the human factors concerned instead of succumbing to the idea that a law officer is an automation and them not succeeding in offering the vital preparation so as for their labor force works at their level best (Hess, 2008). With an acknowledgment of these degrees, leaders of these agencies are in a much better position to recognize and explain their personnel performance to a citizenry inexperienced in the truths of force encounters between criminal subjects and police officers (Braswell et al., 2002). Once a fully programmed replica of ethics training has been integrated, a discipline process can be developed (Gaines & Miller, 2008). Whereas many people deem discipline to have an utterly unconstructive connotation, disciple can, in reality, have constructive attributes. Right behavior has to be reinforced, whereas unconstructive behavior must be quickly, but fairly rebuked. For example, using this police officer who hit one of his suspects after arresting him, maybe his police partner tried to stop him from hitting the suspect, but even after this, the police officer still went on to hit him (Braswell et al., 2002). Therefore, if it was the partner who reported the even to his superiors, then he should be commended for his act because some people consider whistle blowing as an ethical dilemma in the law enforcement, but the partner to the police officer still managed to report the case (Hess, 2008). By commending the partner, the management is reinforcing the ethical tradition of the police force (Braswell et al., 2002). Seeing the Big Picture So as to maintain a fair culture with fairness, integrity and respect, agency heads should comprehend the effect of their decisions (Gaines & Miller, 2008). Shift-work is a certainty in police work. Whereas many police officers through necessity work whereas most people sleep, those same police officers are normally needed to attended business linked activities during normal working hours. Some of the activities that handle comprise of training, court attendance, as well as attendance of mandatory meetings (Braswell et al., 2002). This enveloping adjustment of sleep hours can cause excessive fatigue, which, in the public safety world, can kill (Braswell et al., 2002). Researchers believe that police officers who fall asleep on their duty can shrink their duty and should be warned, the progressive executive officer can, on the other hand, plan sleep lack countermeasures and also support his peers through enlightening society on preemptive ways he or she has taken to ensure that there is public safety (Braswell et al., 2002). Conclusion Law enforcement officials face a lot of dilemmas, which lead to harsh ethical issues. Some of the main ethical dilemmas include gratuities, whistle-blowing, corruption, undercover tactics and use of deception among many other issues. The best way to deal with such dilemmas as corruption is to begin from the top coming all the way to the bottom. This can be through education of leadership and accepting these ethical issues of what they are among others. Another way can be through increasing the salaries of this officers, which will lead them to stop taking advantage of their position of issues such as monetary gain. References Braswell, M., McCarhthy, B. R., & McCarthy, B. J. (2002). Justice, crime and ethics. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Co. Gaines, L. K., & Miller, L. (2008). Criminal justice in action: The core. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning. Hess, K. M. (2008). Introduction to law enforcement and criminal justice. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning. Pollock, J. M. (2008). Ethical dilemmas and decisions in criminal justice. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning. Raines, J. B. (2010). Ethics in policing: misconduct and integrity. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Sharps, M. (2010). Processing Under pressure- stress memory, and decision-making in law enforcement. Flushing, NY: Looseleaf Law Publications. Read More