Ethics in Criminal Justice

Prison Industrial Complex and the Private Prison System
1
Legal paternalism is the idea that the state can coerce individuals into doing something for their own good, whether it is preventing them from engaging in self-harm by holding them in a mental health facility against their will, or obliging an entire nation of free-thinking adults to wear surgical masks so that everyone feels safe from a flu virus. As Feinberg (1971) notes, legal paternalism robs the individual of the ability to think for himself and can cause them to “lose the power of rational judgment and decision” (p. 105). By treating people like children, the state turns adults into children. This is a backwards approach to governance. Even children, as Feinberg (1971) points out, are not treated as children after a certain period because society expects them to grow up. Yet grown-ups are expected to give up their rights and be treated like children when the state decides it alone knows what is best for everyone. Legal paternalism may sound like a good idea to some in the case of preventing self-harm, but as the recent corona hysteria shows people do not know where to draw the line between prevention and obnoxious overstepping by the state. Legal paternalism should thus be considered an unethical approach in criminal justice.
2
Legal moralism follows along with legal paternalism and is based on the idea that laws can be used to force people to adhere to whatever judgments the collective argues is moral. For example, if the collective decides that abortion is moral and that people have a moral right to it, no one is permitted to prevent an abortion from happening so long as the person is an adult. Yet people are expected to try to prevent murder from happening other cases—it is just that in this case, the collective has decided that infanticide is moral so no one can do anything about it and everyone must just look the other way as though it were not happening.
The problem with legal moralism is that it denies individuals the right to determine for themselves what is moral and immoral and it promotes collectivist thinking and action. In a free society, collectivism should be considered a dangerous step towards totalitarianism. Anyone familiar with the work Animal Farm can see plainly enough how the slippery slope works. Thus, one should be against legal moralism.
3
Conflicts of interest arise for defense attorneys, attorneys and prosecutors when they put their own interests ahead of the party whose interests they are supposed to be serving. For instance, a defense attorney might have a conflict of interest in defending his client if he knows the client and is not impartial towards him. An attorney who takes a case only for the fame is acting out of the wrong motivation. A prosecutor who prosecutes a case because he dislikes the defendant and not because there is actually any evidence to go on is one who has a clear conflict of interest.
The law is supposed to be impartial, yet human beings are tasked with applying the law, so there are going to be mistakes along the way. As Hagerty (2017) shows in the documentary Making a Murderer, the issue of conflict of interest comes up in the Steven Avery case, in which a young man was prosecuted for murder yet there appeared to be a clear conflict of interest between the state represented by police officers and the prosecution in terms of their pre-formed opinion of Avery and their desire to get back at him for some perceived slight. Such conflict is unethical.
4
Ethical issues related to conflict of interest concern power and how power is used or abused by officials who are entrusted with certain powers. There can be two types of conflict of interest—policy and operational conflict. For example, there can be conflicts of interest between public and private offices, with people who are given public office using that office for private gain. That is an unethical conflict of interest, yet this occurs regularly and is what is known as crony capitalism. A person will be elected to office and then will use his power to give contracts or key positions to his friends so that they benefit and in turn give him kickbacks.
In criminal justice such conflicts of interest can arise throughout the system, from prosecutors to judges to police chiefs and so on. So long as there is some way for an individual to benefit from a kickback, the conflict of interest issue is going to arise. It is unethical because it is an ends-justify-the-means type of ethics that is inconsistent with the moral codes of deontology, virtue ethics, and even utilitarianism. Ethical egoism is the label under which individuals justify ignoring the conflicts of interest that exist, but ethical egoism is the most subjective and least ethical of all ethical systems.
5
Distrust of the judicial system exists for many reasons. First, people are more and more aware that systemic and structural racism exists and is manifested in the judicial system, what with blacks disproportionately making up a larger percentage of inmates than other populations. Then there is the fact that many defendants are pressured into taking plea bargains, which effectively ends due process. Then there is the fact that people are convicted and jailed even though they are innocent, and this happens more often than it should because evidence is mistreated or manipulated or so-called expert testimony is used to gain convictions for unethical prosecutors. Then there is simply the lack of community policing on the street, which means people do not get to know law enforcement officers and they do not trust they system for which they work as a result (Greene, 2000). There is too little transparency and too much cronyism. On top of all this is the for-profit prison industrial complex that houses all the inmates, who in turn work for pennies on the dollar for US corporations and effectively have become the new slaves. The prison industrial complex is like the new plantation system. People see this and activists like Angela Davis have cried foul about it for years. These are some of the reasons people distrust the justice system.
6
Criticisms of private corrections stem from the fact that private prison complexes are in a for-profit market and make money from people being imprisoned. This should be seen as a clear conflict of interest since it suggests that there is a certain industry and certain players in that industry who personally benefit from more convictions. If laws were to be relaxed and alternative sentencing implemented, people in this industry would not be able to make as much profits. Private profiting should not even be a part of the legal system and the fact that it is gives people a good reason to be critical of the system. If corrections are going to be used, it should be at the expense of the taxpayer, and if taxpayers do not want their money going to corrections, they should elect officials who will pass legislation to change the way the system operates. The powerful lobbies of private corrections, however, have more voice apparently in the way that government is conducted, and that is the big problem critics have.
References
Feinberg, J. (1971). Legal paternalism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 1(1), 105-124.
Greene, J. R. (2000). Community policing in America: Changing the nature, structure, and function of the police. Criminal justice, 3(3), 299-370.
Hagerty, J. (2017). ‘Making a Murderer:’ Was There Really A Conflict Of Interest In The Steven Avery Case? Retrieved from https://www.inquisitr.com/4483799/making-a-murderer-was-there-really-a-conflict-of-interest-in-the-steven-avery-case/
Pathranarakul, P. (2006). Conflict of interest: an ethical issue in public and private management. Thai Journal of Public Administration, 4(1), 11-11.