Philosophical and Practical Approach for Balancing Issues essay
It is highly important for any person working in criminal justice or planning to work in criminal justice to have ethical standards of conduct that will guide the choices and decisions in complex situations. It is also important to have a personal ethical philosophy because criminal justice professionals often have to deal with offenders and criminals and might have to face conflicts of interest or conflicts of ethical principles in their work. The purpose of this paper is to discuss my personal philosophy and approach for balancing the following issues: individual rights and the public’s protection, balancing the use of immoral means to achieve desirable objectives, balancing the use of reward and punishment and to recommend ways of using ethics in decision-making pertaining to the considered issues in criminal justice.
- Individual rights and the public’s protection
One of key issues in the work of a criminal justice professional is balancing social order and public protection with maintaining individual rights and liberties (Souryal, 2010). In this context, my personal ethical philosophy is based on a combination of utilitarian approach and deontology. The basis of the existence of the society is the primacy of the common good and law over individual rights in critical situations (Souryal, 2010).
I rely on the following principle: individual freedom can be limited for the purposes of promoting the common welfare, for protecting citizens and for ensuring social order. At the same time, in ambiguous situations when it is not clear whether the common good or social order will be affected by my particular choice, I use utilitarian approach and weigh the balance of positive and negative consequences, taking into account both the “depth” of limiting individual rights and the “breadth” of the consequent effect for the common good. For example, if someone is performing actions that might lead to terrorist acts or make it easier for terrorists to attack a particular goal, it is justified to limit the individual rights and to request to alter or stop the actions for the purposes of protecting the public.
- The use of reward and punishment in criminal justice
There exist different ethical views on reward and punishment in criminal justice. As for reward, there are two key approaches – utilitarian (rewarding basing on the results) and justice (rewarding for effort) (Pollock, 2011). With regard to punishment, key approaches include retributive punishment – punishing the offender for the crime committed in the extent comparable with the crime committed, utilitarian punishment – punishment used to deter potential offenders from committing crimes, and punishment based on restitution – punishment is performed to compensate the victims for their losses and suffering (Pollock, 2011).
In my opinion, it is not possible to limit the choice to one particular theory of reward or punishment because there exist multiple factors influencing the choice of reward or punishment. In the context of rewarding, I choose to reward for results when the undertaking was successful and for effort if the results were altered due to some unforeseen external circumstances. This approach allows to filter out the cases of window-dressing and motivates to achieve results. Regarding punishment, I tend to rely on utilitarian view and choose punishment which will likely deter potential offenders from committing crimes.
- The use of immoral means to accomplish desirable ends
A notable ethical issue in criminal justice is the so-called “Dirty Harry problem” – the use of immoral means to accomplish desirable ends by criminal justice professionals (Gaines & Miller, 2012). In many cases, it is hardly possible to resolve the problem using moral means and it might be necessary to use bribes, lying, sham to stop offenders or to prevent crimes. Furthermore, it might be not possible to resist criminals without resorting to immoral means (Gaines & Miller, 2012). On the other hand, the use of immoral means places criminal justice professionals on the same footing with criminals.
In my case, ethical choice for this dilemma is the following. I believe that it is admissible to use immoral means to accomplish desirable ends for a criminal justice professional in the following circumstances: 1) the ends should be unquestionably desirable and failing to reach these ends should be unquestionably undesirable; 2) there should be no effective way of achieving the ends using only moral means (Gaines & Miller, 2012); and 3) the ends should be so urgent that not using all available means to achieve them would be immoral. These conditions limit the use of immoral means to only urgent and important ends, and primarily rely on deontological principles (condition 1) and utilitarian principles (condition 2 and 3).
- Using ethics in decision-making in criminal justice
Key theories of normative ethics – utilitarian ethics, deontology, virtue ethics and justice ethics – provide the background for ethical decision-making which can be very useful in ambiguous situations in criminal justice. Basing on my experience, it is possible to provide several recommendations for ethical decision-making in criminal justice.
First of all, I think that criminal justice professionals should follow several key deontological principles such as the primacy of law, the importance of protecting the common good and social order, etc. These principles are useful, for example, in the situations when individual rights and public protection come into conflict.
Secondly, I believe that utilitarian approach is quite efficient in the situations when other approaches fail to provide a way out of the situation or where they produce very inefficient decisions. In particular, utilitarian view can be used to assess the use of immoral means to achieve desirable ends provided that the person making the decision has enough information to be able to assess the consequences of own actions.
Thirdly, utilitarian approach also appears to be efficient for choosing reward and punishment, and balancing reward and punishment. Utilitarian approach to punishment allows to deter crime or at least to reduce the probability of crime, therefore targeting future crimes while other approaches address already committed crimes and might not affect future crimes. In addition, utilitarian approach is efficient for designing rewards and for increasing motivation of rewarded persons. These recommendations can be applied by criminal justice professionals when they have to make decisions in the presence of ethical dilemmas.
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