Need for strong moral character in criminal justice system participants

1.  Explain how a criminal justice agency can ensure that it hires moral individuals. Criminal justice leaders are public servants responsible to their community. This responsibility, together with the huge amount of control and influence they have, necessitates that they display superior levels of ethical and moral conduct. Ethical practice guidelines remind criminal justice heads to realize the divide between integrity and friendship; corporate objectives and adeptness and client interests; between personal prejudices, interests, and views and professional values.

In this respect, all law enforcement leaders are required to refrain from unethical conduct when carrying out their duties. Ethicality is crucial, considering their job involves making life-altering decisions targeted at involved individuals (both victims and offenders). For instance, policemen who put legislation into force and work within societal settings are empowered to snatch away citizens' freedom, undertake investigations, issue tickets and engage in covert operations. Arbitrariness may arise if police officials, who are criminal justice agents, aren't bound by ethical rules.

The end outcome may be abuse of justice or erroneous lawsuits filed against governmental bodies themselves (Karimu, 2012). The concept of self-legitimacy has been identified as especially crucial. Officials who believe they are wrongly treated by their superiors display relatively low confidence in their organization. But in case of officials having higher self-legitimacy levels, injustice meted out by the organization did not damage their confidence. Personality inventories which are routinely employed by a number of agency recruitment processes can profit from the integration of measures which gauge traits such as confidence.

Further, the recruitment of some personnel with work experiences or hailing from backgrounds needing superior degrees of trust in authority figures (for instance, military personnel) might prove helpful in employing individuals prepared for higher self-legitimacy levels (Wolfe & Nix, 2015). 2. Provide strategies for creating accountability in the area of ethical training and action.

The absence of procedures in place for accountability and transparency indicates significant organization costs, as the interests of "insider" agents revolve around pursuing personal aims -- chiefly, income and career growth, and smooth case processing -- instead of revolving around trying to meet citizens' aims and respecting their values (Lacey, 2013). The inculcation of self-legitimacy can be achieved via in-service or academy educational initiatives.

For instance, law enforcement official training may include activities and discourses concentrating on instilling confidence in vested authority among recruits, followed by coaching them on fairly and judiciously applying their power. Studying valid hiring and training programs aimed at inculcating self-legitimacy in the police force is identified as a key area for further exploration. There is a need for ongoing explorations of self-legitimacy antecedents. It is essential to acquire more knowledge regarding the causes underlying improved police force confidence.

The contribution of variables like personality traits (for instance, self-regulatory capacity), past experiences (for instance, past training, a stint in the military, etc.), relationships with coworkers, media/public opinion, experiences with command personnel or superiors, etc. must be studied. A connected question is: Is improved self-legitimacy in law enforcement officials always better? Excessively high levels of self-legitimacy may, for instance, indicate conceit, a lack of self-control, or some other problematic characteristic in the individual, potentially giving rise to counterproductive conduct at the workplace.

It is vital to tackle these questions and incorporate their answers into the growing pool of literature on the subject of self-legitimacy (Wolfe & Nix, 2015). 3. Explain how an organization can create an expectation for moral conduct. Firstly, individuals expect their employers to accord them their due respect and dignity. They desire and like compassionate and kind superiors. Secondly, superiors are expected to display objectivity and fairness in their decision-making, which ought to be grounded in corroborated facts and not in personal prejudiced notions and views.

This includes allowing subordinates a say in decision-making. Subordinates expect to be allowed to voice their views and concerns when making team decisions, and also anticipate a subsequent justification for why a particular action was taken. Lastly, law enforcement organizations are expected to have in place a process for appealing decisions perceived to be erroneous. Officers attach considerable importance to whether or not they are receiving procedurally just treatment.

Procedural fairness represents a means using which law enforcement leaders can let their workers know that the agency cares for and values them. Consequently, employees identify with their employer, internalizing employer values, a phenomenon that has the following two key consequences:1) Greater employee responsiveness to leadership directives; and2) Greater willingness to voluntarily undertake activities aimed at making the agency succeed. This includes abiding by the rules and collaborating with colleagues to accomplish tasks.

Integration of procedural justice in law enforcement agencies' climate helps generate a more effective and efficient workplace atmosphere (Trinkner, Tyler, & Atiba G, 2016). All law enforcement agency leaders should regularly make sure employees at all levels know what the agency expects of them with regard to integrity and ethical conduct. This is critical if the agency wishes to establish lofty behavior standards for itself.

Furthermore, leaders at every level must devise, emphasize, and implement agency policies and regulations for ensuring every employee clearly grasps law enforcement sector guidelines, policies and behavior-related rules. This will help prevent conflicts if fresh rules are designed for preventing unscrupulous conduct (Karimu, 2012). 4. Discuss how an organization can measure progress towards a moral and just criminal justice department. Procedural justice has extended street-level policing-related forms, but is quite concise when it comes to steps to be taken by police department leaders in implementing the model.

One can expect police departments which enforce this sort of model to expect their employees to exert power with procedural fairness. Their CEOs give high priority to procedural justice (Worden & McLean, 2016). 1. Leaders' expectations are embodied in departmental processes and rules; further, officials are trained to interact appropriately with citizens. 2. Officials are treated with procedural justice in the same way as they are expected to treat citizens, thus improving their confidence in the agency and their obligation to abide by its regulations. 3.

Extant police performance markers like use of force, complaints, etc. are monitored and the markers' limitations realized. Supervisors are tasked with spot-checking police-citizen interaction quality. 4. Leaders may also come up with more systematic performance measures, carrying out routine surveys of members of the public who have.