Criminal Justice What do you Think

Paradigm of Laws

Paradigm of Laws

• the paradigm of law your actions define and give reasons

Law and ethics applies to everyone whether free individuals or a prisoners. Everybody has the right of existence, justice and fairness. However, there are occasions when a prisoner cannot be offered the right of confidentiality and privacy. This is exactly what I have done to the inmate in state prison where I am a correctional officer. My paradigm of law does not believe in sincerity of inmates. Given the history of the prisoner who has deceived twice earlier, I cannot trust him again. Whatever he says or does, it has to be communicated to authorities so that they can take action.

The inmates are individuals that have caused harm to the society earlier thus they are in the prison. These people should not be blindly trusted. The inmates have the history of deviating the administration in wrong directions so that they can involve in crimes meanwhile. Thus they should not be believed. Gaining trust of one inmate is not more important than the welfare of society or police department. There can be an explosive at the site indicated by the inmate thus the information should be shared, verified and police should take action on the given information.

According to Kant's belief, no action is right or wrong in itself rather the scenario makes it so. Agreeing to Kant's notion, I informed the authorities about the inmate's information so that no harm is caused to the society due to smuggled goods or related evil.

• A justification of whether you lied to the inmate

A lie is a lie. A lie can often benefit more people than truth would but it does not make it a truth. Thus it is true that I lied to the inmate that I will keep his information a secret yet I disclosed it...

But this lie can be legally supported since often the solution to getting intelligence is to lie. The action is again justified in the light of Kantian ethics because it is aimed at achieving socially beneficial results.
• How you treated the inmate -- explaining whether you treated the inmate with respect

The inmates are a part of prison system and the jail administration gets several tasks done through these inmates. A well behaved treatment of inmates helps them trust the state prison department so that they can cooperate. I believe my treatment with inmates was good thus one of the inmates was tempted to tell me about a secret.

Inmates respect has many dimensions. Either an officer can avoid torture for getting information about illegal goods or he can listen to him with due consideration. Both these acts are the show of respect to the inmate. I have respected the inmate in this respect. I, however, did not respect his right of confidentiality. This is because the information was not limited to personal interest but the information could affect police department and could help them find out illegal activities going on.

• An explanation of whether the actions would be considered universally acceptable

Some actions are universally acceptable. Telling lie to get access to truth is one of these. For example, the mother tells lies to the child about a jinee standing out so that the kid never leaves the house alone. Likewise, a teacher tells pupils that she has eight eyes thus she can see them cheating so that they may avoid any intentions to cheat. In the same way, the police authorities can tell lies to the inmates to gain their trust so that they get access to secret information on the illegal activities going on in the prison. While lies are not universally acceptable, telling strategic lies as a…