Constitutional Rights and Criminal Justice

Constitutional Rights and Criminal Justice Employees

While on duty, do criminal justice employees have the right to freedom of speech?

While all employees, regardless of their place of employment, have certain basic rights, (such as the right to enjoy a safe workplace environment and to freedom of speech) these rights are not absolute in all circumstances. The courts have tended to assume that there is a certain assumption of risk, when working in an environment such as a prison. It has also been deemed that the state can have a legitimate interest in limiting the free speech of certain individuals, in the interests of protecting the public. As guardians of the public, criminal justice employees may face particular restrictions upon their behaviors.

However, there must, in all cases be a balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the public employee. For example, laws which prohibited police officers from engaging in any and all criticism of their departments, even in private conversation, were deemed unconstitutional. Nor can public officers be fired solely because of their political affiliation, if they are not in positions specifically devoted to policy-making. However, prohibiting officers from associating with known criminals on a social basis is deemed to be constitutional, and in one instance a Texas officer was deemed to be constitutionally barred from promotion, given the embarrassment his extramarital affair had brought upon the police force.

Delineate the constitutional rights of criminal justice employees in the area of searches and seizures.

While the Fourth Amendment protects Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures, officers have been ruled to have no expectation of privacy regarding their police lockers and other areas pertinent to their work. However, some protections for officers do exist. For example, in a 1985 Iowa case in which police officers were forced to sign a consent form which mandated they could be searched at any time, the court said that signing the consent form did not mean that employees could or had waived all of their Fourth Amendment rights. However, the courts did find that police officers at any time may be forced to appear in a lineup, although this constituted a seizure of the officer's physical person.

Explain how the free exercise of religion can pose problems for criminal justice administrators.