Criminal Justice Decisions Making Dilemmas, Challenges and Barriers - Literature review Example

Criminal Justice Decisions Making Dilemmas, Challenges and Barriers al Affiliation Criminal Justice Decisions Making Dilemmas, Challenges and Barriers Introduction Like other practice areas, criminal justice professionals encounter decision making situations. These decisions are regulated by standards and code of conduct that calls for ethical practice. However, some situations do not involve straightforward decision making due to challenges, barriers, and dilemmas that prevent ethical and timely services (Anderson & Slate, 2011). The diverse actors involved in decision making within criminal justice include the legislature involved in decisions regarding the criminal law content; police officers’ decisions during investigations and arrest; and the decisions made by prosecutors concerning the technique to use to prosecute and the charges to bring. In addition, criminal justice decisions, Jurys’ decision, and appellate court decisions, all of which constitute the complicated criminal justice network. In each of the criminal justice decisions, research reveals that the system can perform better by using current knowledge with lots of fidelity and consistency. Furthermore, research findings indicate that knowledge application can cause significant benefits in terms of costs to counties, states and nations. As stated by the Center for Effective Public Policy Pretrial Justice Institute and The Carey Group (2010), like other systems, the criminal justice system can also be made safer through the adoption of evidence based criminal justice systems. The evidence here refers to multiple meanings such as items collected at the crime scene, footages by security cameras, and accounts of the eye witnesses. In addition, the justice system requires this approach within the 21st century given the emerging challenges that require understanding and translation of the empirical findings into policy and practice. Consequently, the policies developed from such findings will shape the criminal justice practice and rebuild the long-held perceptions of criminal justice, and retrain the workforce to take up more operational practices and gain new skills. Criminal justice decisions go beyond the learning of rules and applying them to particular cases, given that decisions are founded on discretion or personal practice of judgment in making choices regarding courses of action. As discretion comes to play, the police experience challenges, barriers, or dilemmas in their course to arrest, investigate, question, search, or use force. Furthermore, judges and prosecutors utilize personal judgment in decision making with regards to charging a person with a crime or whether to plea-bargain. Furthermore, members of the parole board to exercise discretion in decisions regarding inmates release from prison. Identify the Profession In the United States, the criminal justice system constitutes of three primary institutions that are involved in the case from inception, trial, and punishment. According to Neubauer & Fradella (2013), law enforcement officials commence a case, by investigating the crime and obtaining evidence for use in identification and in the persecution of the perpetrator. The court system, then takes up the case to weigh evidence and determine whether the perpetrator’s guilt falls beyond reasonable doubt. Upon being proven guilty, the criminal goes to the correctional system for behavior correction through probation or incarceration. Although it is the wish of the criminal justice officials to deliver each stage constitutionally and respect and protect the rights of the convicted and accused, decisions making on time encounters dilemmas, challenges and/or barriers that stall law enforcement. Under the guidance of the criminal justice code of ethics, law enforcers are expected to constantly make ethical decisions. This necessitates the need to evaluate each situation, understand it, and evaluate the impact that their decisions will have. However, unfolding situations before law enforcers present situations that cause abuses and overreaching through the most crucial rights of the fourth amendment ban against irrational seizures and searches and Miranda advisement. In their effort to protect evidence in a “hot pursuit”, police tend to engage in seizures and searches deemed unreasonable and that ethically prevent the police from protecting the suspects. Furthermore, the police also unnecessarily ignore Miranda advisement through the assumption that the suspected persons are familiar with these rights and do not require to be reminded prior to questioning. The implication is biased information gathering that prevents the fair implementation of justice. Conversely, when a suspect is charged, the judges may be forced to get into unnecessary delay probably involving a delayed pretrial decision and causing several consequent hearing in order to discover the presence of any probable cause to believe that the accused person engaged in crime within the court’s jurisdiction. Typical Professional Development in Criminal Justice System In their line of duty, law enforcers encounter situations that force them into mistrusting the perpetrators or being mistrusted, thus dealing with marred with poor public perception and relations. Mistrusting the law enforcers arises from factors such as revenue generation and law enforcement. The attitude by the public regarding the manner in which law enforcers allow themselves to generate income is often questionable due to associated corruption (Gilmartin & Harris, 1998). For instance, the police are at times known to generate revenue by imposing unreasonable monetary fines, while judges and correctional institution officers earn from court and probation services, and this causes the public to view them as revenue generators. Consequently, the role of law enforcers’ shift from peace officers to revenue earners who only make decisions of someone breaking the law for self-monetary gains (Gilmartin & Harris, 1998). Furthermore, law enforcers tend to be biased in their decisions regarding how to enforce a situation and drifting away from perfection. When engaged in biased decisions, officers never become instruments of teaching what is against the law and worth punishment, and how to remain within the law. According to Gilmartin & Harris (1998), most corrupt police officers tend to justify and rationalize their conducts using victimization that they believe is a sign that no one cares for them. As a result, law enforcers avoid practices such as avoiding paperwork, performing superficial investigations, avoiding activities that are on-sight, and lacking follow up. In addition, law enforcers end up being less productive, and develop passive resistance to mandates within their organization. Besides acts of omission, police then uses acts of commission to administrative violations that involve not observing minor rules deemed to stand in the police officer’s way and inconsequential (Gilmartin & Harris, 1998). For instance, law officers’ acts of commission include engaging in banned pursuits, romantic intrudes during work, possessing unauthorized weapons or equipment, drinking on duty, firing warning shots, and failure to report accidents. Finally, law officers develop from omitting duties and responsibilities, and committing administrative acts to engage in criminal activities. At this point, law officers engage in and justify conduct they could not have imagined. For instance, criminal activities by law enforcers include embellishing payroll or overtime records, using money seized from drug dealers to inappropriately buy police equipment, and not turning evidence to the courts for offender prosecution. Furthermore, law enforcers tend to misappropriate or steal assets seized from criminals and rationalize their behaviour as not involving killing or hurting of innocent persons. Amidst such odd practices, law enforcers find themselves in the dilemma of loyalty versus integrity and such dilemmas encourage the development of criminal actions into conspiracies, and the involved risks go beyond suspension or reprimands. Accomplishment of ethical development Criminal Justice system Mauer & Epstein (2012, p. 9) highlight the most crucial recent development in social and crime policy to be the support for “evidence-based practices.” The aim is to guarantee that law enforcers are presented with sufficient information regarding what works and what doesn’t. Additionally, evidence-based practices eliminate the unreliability of eye witnesses’ memory, thus eliminating miscarriages of justice and reducing the possibility of error. Consequently, true suspects in any criminal or civil offence are easily identified without any compromise. For America and other world nations, evidence-based criminal justice practice results in a unified and proven procedure for conducting all investigations (Mauer & Epstein, 2012). Unified and proven procedures cause the development of the justice, professionalism concept since only practices that are proven effective are adopted by corrections, prosecutors, police, judges, treatment, and service providers. Furthermore, unified criminal justice practice procedure presents a system that is more collaborative than adversarial where the system promotes problem-centered approach to crime that aligns with community policing, and where the emphasis is on community partnership to deal with community issues (Mauer & Epstein, 2012, p. 13). Through the application of these problem-oriented innovations, the criminal justice system coupled with other interventions reveals the likelihood of reaping enormous benefits in reducing crime and enhances criminal justice legitimacy. By promoting evidence-based criminal justice practice, a reconsideration of the sentencing approach will cause less rigid and less punitive approach that will direct law enforcers to effectively engage in informal social control including positive peer pressure, family, and community support. For effective evidence-based practice, the public opinion must heavily rely on an informed public opinion research and evolving media, and the craftsmanship of experts, advocates, and other people within the criminal justice system through linking of experiences and values with those of the audience. Typical Code of Conduct Utilized While law enforcers require a unified approach to practice, a code of professional responsibility is crucial for governing the sustenance of performance standards (United Nations Human Rights, 2015). Through their code of conduct, law enforcers’ occupation is governed and set beyond normal morality that makes the code of ethics worthwhile. Law enforcers are expected to unconditionally remain committed to a code of ethics, and not lessen their ideals because of the circumstances, situations, or environments they are within. However, the expectation is that any law enforcer remains faithful even in the face of adversity for the sake of their integrity. According to the United Nations Human Rights (2015), are expected to serve everyone in the community against illegal acts while remaining consistent through high level of responsibility demanded by their profession. Law enforcers in this case include both elected and appointed officials exercising detention and arrest powers. Secondly, law enforcers must reverence and defend human self-esteem and protect human rights where human rights are those identify nationally and internationally. Law enforcers are also expected to only where necessary use force in a reasonable way such that they do not exceed the force that may be used. Under human rights protection, law enforcers are also expected not to inflict, tolerate, or instigate torturous or cruel acts that threaten the life of an individual, national security, or political instability (United Nations Human Rights, 2015). Amidst changing criminal justice system, law enforcer are expected to respect the existing code and law and oppose any violations as a way of preserving the required balance between human rights violations, and the discipline of the agency requiring public safety. Possible Conflict between ethical development elements and obligations of law enforcement individuals In an attempt to shift towards being a highly just criminal justice system, conflicts arise as human rights are unmatched as guideposts. This could be due to engrained culture that causes citizens to wait for the courts to provide human rights as they relax. Through the knowledge of human rights, it is possible to urge officials to turn to them for guidance during policies’ crafting, as a form of emphasizing restraint in the exercise of the penal powers of the state. The common criminal justice conflicts between ethical growth and the law enforcement officials are due to actions such as unwarranted racial disparities in arrests, wretched conditions in prison, excessive sentences, and disfranchisement. A major factor that contributes to the creation of friction between law enforcers and the community today is the police culture of using excessive force on due to poorly comprehend policies or inadequately implemented the guidelines. As a result, dealing with the communities of colour and immigrants involves excessive force that is deemed to be abnormal. Given this perception, lack of value-based law enforcers’ results in conflict with the victimized communities. In order to deal with the resistance from the victimized communities, police officers pay little attention to ethical violations and behave inappropriately (United Nations Human Rights, 2015). In addition, the inappropriate conduct of law enforcing police officers causes inappropriate investigation that is not committed to any thorough management intervention strategy to lessen wrongful police acts. Consequently, the law enforcing officers end up abusing the power entrusted to them for private and personal gain while perverting from integrity (Hayes, 2015). Through corruption, the affected and non-affected communities perceive that presented breach of trust as a dishonesty and partiality that it is worth fighting. Discussion: The Current Level of Law Enforcers Training and Development is Insufficient While some of the conflicts are due to deliberate police actions, most law enforcement officials believe that their values as derived from numerous recommended sources conflict with their personal beliefs, forcing the officers to choose between them (Gaines & Kappeler, 2014). As a result, the perception of the law enforcing officer’s action as ethical or unethical depends on the values one adheres to when making their evaluation. For the officer, the choice was made out of a lack of clearly defined choices causing an inability to determine the circumstances that will arise and often leaving the officer in a vacuum with no guidance regarding the best course of action (Gaines & Kappeler, 2014). Terrorism also presents a great challenge to the law enforcement officials who are expected to perform all their duties impartially, without regard to sex, religion, race, and political aspirations or beliefs (Siegel & Worall, 2013). Due to lack of sufficient training and knowledge regarding terrorism, police officers in their investigations of terror crimes tend to treat citizens unequally as they believe the community from which terrorist belong deserves little consideration, courtesy, dignity. Due to pressure to end terrorism and lack of training on how to reduce terrorism, officers tend to allow personal feelings, friendships, and animosities influence official conduct. Siegel and Worall (2013) confirm that the current law enforcement training and leadership is wanting as it lacks more focus and efficiency as evidence in ethical issues cropping in law daily. The implication is that the current training lacks job relatedness in training and employment standards and lowering professionalism of law enforcement officers. Suggestions on how Law enforcing individuals can continue to make ethical decisions Police officers must understand that, though they are subject to military training and education, only judgment and discretion, and what is expected of officers is taught. However, no class is present to teach character and ethical conduct in the course of one’s duty, except the provision of a code of conduct. The code of conduct enables one to understand the consequences of what is deemed acceptable behavior when on duty and regardless of their personal code of ethics, thus making them accountable for expected conduct. Police officers in each department are also expected to set policing values that reflect their community. This is possible through combining the findings from the community and the police officers in a way that represents a consensus of the values that are held dear to the community and the police department. Some of the police department must advance and preserve democracy, prevent crime, collaborate with the community in service delivery, serve the community accountably, and observe integrity and professionalism. The criminal justice system must seek to promote a police culture and society that does not promote social isolation, define clearly cut policies in the recruitment and selection of officers, and offer training that reduce police-society conflict, while promoting transparency and accountability. References Anderson, P., & Slate, R. (2011). The Decision-Making Network: An Introduction to Criminal Justice. Durham: CAP Press . Center for Effective Public Policy Pretrial Justice Institute; The Carey Group. (2010). A Framework for Evidence-Based Decision Making in Local Criminal Justice Systems. United State: Center for Effective Public Policy. Gaines, L., & Kappeler, V. (2014). Policing in America. London: Routledge. Gilmartin, K., & Harris, J. (1998). Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement. New York: ES Press. Hayes, S. (2015). Criminal Justice Ethics: Cultivating the Moral Imagination. London: Routledge. Mauer, M., & Epstein, K. (2012). To Build a Better The Criminal Justice System: 25 Experts Envision the Next 25 years if Reform. United States: The Sentencing Project. Neubauer, D., & Fradella, H. (2013). America’s Courts and the Criminal Justice System. United States: Cengage Learning. Siegel, L., & Worall, J. (2013). Introduction to Criminal Justice. United States: Cengage Learning. United Nations Human Rights. (2015, May 22). Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials. 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