POLICE ETHICS

Police Ethics

Police Ethics

Outline

The paper deals with the importance of police ethics and integrity in contemporary policing. It first describes the field of applied ethics in general. It explains the basis for the structure of professional moral obligations, briefly depicts the core imperatives of applied ethics and describes the process of moral reasoning. It then defines police ethics, discusses the reasons for its relative underdevelopment, and delineates its future development in three interrelated directions: (a) applying the principles of applied ethics to police profession; (b) establishing standards of ethical conduct in policing; and (c) defining the means and content of education and training in police ethics. Next, it discusses the organisational environment that is conductive to police ethics and elaborates on the concept of integrity.

Abstract

Police ethics and integrity are of critical importance in the professionalization of policing and the best antidotes to police corruption, brutality, neglect of human rights, and other forms of police deviance.

Background

Police officers face situations every day that can range from the boring to the life threatening, and from the frustrating to the exhilarating. Some of the situations that are the most critical -- for the officer, his / her fellow members, the police service as an organisation, and the public they serve -- are those that offer an opportunity to breach the ethics of police and policing. It is important to understand the perspective of individual officers on police ethics for three major reasons: • Acting ethically or unethically is ultimately an individual choice, and it is important to know which factors individuals say influence that choice. • As an organisation, the police service may have limited avenues for individuals to come forward in confidence, and it is important that the messages of individual officers be heard by the police service. • The policies and procedures that are designed to prevent and punish unethical actions, and to encourage and reward ethical ones, will be most successful if they fit with the perspectives of individual officers.

Police ethics applies the above-described principles to the field of policing. Compared to medical or business ethics, police ethics is relatively underdeveloped. There are several reasons for this, the major ones being the paramilitary philosophy of policing and misunderstanding of the need for police ethics (Paragon, 2000). First, within the paramilitary philosophy of policing, police officers are assigned the role of executors of orders from their supervisors. They are not supposed to question those orders, so there is not much need for moral deliberations. The basic virtue of police officers within this framework is obedience. Police leadership, on the other hand, is either not accountable to anyone (since they are setting their own goals and can always tailor the statistics to fit their needs) or they are accountable only to the party in power, with which they are in a symbiotic relationship. It is not surprising that police ethics does not thrive in such a context. Second, some practitioners are mislead by a belief that as far as police officers ...