This paper examines the role of ethics within the criminal justice system, defining ethical frameworks and their application to law enforcement, legal practice, and judicial proceedings. The author distinguishes between normative and applied ethics, illustrates how ethics and law overlap yet remain separate forces in society, and documents racial inequalities in criminal justice despite existing safeguards. The paper reviews constitutional and procedural protections—including due process clauses and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure—that aim to ensure equal treatment, while acknowledging that systemic inequities persist until addressed at the societal level.
What am I doing? Is it right or wrong? These questions are asked by individuals every day. In the criminal justice system, police officers, lawyers, and judges ask these questions perhaps one hundred times in a given day. However, they add another critical question to those listed above: Is it ethical? In the criminal justice system, actions can speak louder than words, and all of these actions have far-reaching moral implications and major ramifications.
Defining ethics can be difficult. However, to provide a proper definition, ethics can be defined as "a system of moral principles; the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or particular ground, culture, etc." Other definitions include "moral principles, as of an individual and that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions."
You can read, understand, or even memorize the definition of ethics. However, it ultimately comes down to how you apply it to everyday life or to your given profession. Ethics is something that goes to the core of each person. It is affected by how a person was raised and what they were taught. For example, a criminal may blame their misdeeds on their childhood, their home life, and even their educational background. All in all, your personal experiences affect your ability to apply ethics in your life.
Ethics can be broken down into three subcategories: meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Meta-ethics is the exploration of methods, language, scope of moral values, and reasoning used in the interpretation of ethical terms. Normative ethics refers to the behavior of oneself and the standards of conduct, harking back to the golden rule of "do unto others as you want them to do unto you." Applied ethics is the category which analyzes practical moral problems as they arise in personal and professional contexts—for example, among lawyers and doctors. In the criminal justice system, normative ethics and applied ethics are particularly present due to the ethical dilemmas and conflicts that arise within this system.
In normative ethics, one's behavior is controlled by society at large. This control is established in the penal code at the state and federal government level. The penal codes establish a standard of conduct for one's behavior. If one does not conform to the penal code of society, he or she is punished under this code. As society has changed, so have the penal codes.
In the applied ethics category, which consists of analysis of specific and controversial moral issues that affect society at large, modern applied ethics have been subdivided into convenient groups such as medical ethics, legal ethics, and judicial ethics. In the context of criminal justice, controversial moral issues that applied ethics addresses include the death penalty. There are significant groups of people both against it and for it. Another issue in criminal justice affected by applied ethics is gun control, since there are significant groups of people both for and against gun control.
Some people will say that law is a source of ethical standards for society. However, the opposite is true: real-life situations affect the ethical standards within the law. Ethics and law overlap each other. As a society, what we perceive to be unethical conduct may sometimes also violate society's laws, though this will not be in all situations. In some situations, some behaviors may be perceived as unethical by society, while in others they might not. Ethics attempts to define what is good and bad for society and individuals as a whole. Ethics are a set of duties that persons owe to themselves and, in some cases, to others.
An example of the ethical difference between law and real life is the issue of slavery. Slavery dates back to 8000 B.C. in Egypt and continued in the United States until the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1864, ratified by the states in 1865. After 1865, it was against the law to have slaves. However, prior to 1865, a majority of society in the South did not have any ethical issue with owning or selling other human beings. Society's laws do not, and are not intended to, incorporate ethical principles or values. However, ethical standards will be reflected in society's laws.
"Racial disparities in investigation and judicial procedures"
The unequal racial treatment also deeply affects the juvenile criminal justice system. In high-crime areas, police tend to stop African Americans and other minorities in searches for suspects more than other races. Many judges, including Justice O'Connor, have argued for the need to improve family and juvenile courts in the United States to provide equal treatment for all. Only through equal treatment of everyone under the law can there be a fair and just system for all in the criminal justice system.
In our criminal justice procedure, there are many safeguards in place to protect individuals from unlawful and unethical treatment. The United States constitutional provisions, federal and state statutes, local and federal court rules, and other laws control and provide guidance on the administration of justice in criminal cases. Even if law enforcement officers do not practice equal treatment for all people, the criminal justice procedures do provide some safeguards. The criminal justice system is broken down into different stages through which a criminal must travel before exiting the system. Some of these steps include arraignment, plea negotiations, pre-trial hearings on motions, trial, sentencing, post-trial motions, appeals, probation, and parole proceedings. Each of these stages has different rules and ethics that govern them.
Criminal procedures are enacted to guard both the innocent and the guilty. Each level of the judicial system has these safeguards. At the federal level, those safeguards are placed in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Title 18 of the United States Code, and the United States Constitution. One of the key safeguards is the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and its due process clauses, which guarantee that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
The criminal justice system in the United States is run by individuals who interpret the laws, rules, and procedures. Ethics assist criminal justice practitioners to ensure everyone is treated equally under the law. Some may disagree; however, nothing is perfect in our society. Society must continue to enact safeguards to minimize perceptions and prejudices of inequities in the criminal justice system. However, we will never be able to eliminate the underlying prejudices and inequities in our criminal justice system until we eliminate them in our society as a whole.
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