Ethics and Criminal Justice

Ethics And Criminal Justice

Introduction

Traditional approaches to moral instruction have a tendency either to indoctrinate students or to take a so-called neutral approach. Both fail to "conscientize" criminal justice students adequately to moral practices. Further, traditional approaches to moral instruction tend to be excessively abstract or mundane when applied to criminal justice ethics. For though ethics courses now abound in criminal justice curricula, they are everywhere in the chains of approaches that either take an abstruse "high road," a mundane "low road," or at best an incomplete "middle road." (Brodeur 2008)

Discussion

The "high road" offers the wonderfully rich literature of philosophy, humanistic psychology, and the social sciences on ethics. Building logically upon centuries of sustained inquiry, it can render a systematic understanding of current moral "conscientizing" through contemporary phenomenology, ordinary language philosophy, pragmatism, and other currents of thought. And it can overcome the abuses of indoctrination or indifference in moral inquiry. Although this literature enriches all inquiry into ethics, it is an overwhelming challenge to students and faculty in a one-term course. In a recent survey, criminal justice ethics faculty complained that this highly general material was too difficult for students. Another interpretation of the same survey data summarized this as faculty frustration in "getting students to appreciate abstract theories" The high road could be made more teachable were criminal justice undergraduates required to complete several courses in philosophy in preparation for the study of ethics. Other disciplines (for example, public administration) have toyed with such curricular notions but have found that a sequence of several courses in philosophy, humanistic psychology, and so forth would require up to an additional year of academic study and that these courses were therefore unlikely to be accepted as curricular additions. Similarly, given the demands upon our undergraduate curriculum, we are unlikely to offer courses in general or moral philosophy as prerequisites to applied ethics study. Further, out-sourcing such courses to a philosophy or political science department would run the very real risk of a wholly irrelevant curriculum. In any case, such courses are simply unthinkable in our police and corrections academies and training programs. (Neocleous 2004)

The operation of a constitutional public interest ethic within criminal justice has become so routine in recent decades that it runs the risk of being taken for granted. For example, the federal court takeover of prisons and jails for constitutionally-based reforms that was considered outrageous only a decade ago is now considered routine. Although some recent conservative Court decisions have gone the other way, no "conservative counter-revolution" has yet occurred. Constitutional lessons are pervasive in so many criminal justice courses today that we forget that the Constitution is an authoritative statement of moral aspirations, a complete "expression of the nation's commitment to a good society." As such, aspects of a constitutional public interest ethic are already "pervasively" taught in many criminal justice programs in such courses as criminal procedure, inmates' legal rights, and so on. What is advocated here pays homage to the constitutional public interest via freestanding ...