Table of Contents
Introduction
There is no doubt that the public eye is harsher, more cynical and skeptical of law enforcement officers than any other profession. While a good number of officers are beyond reproach in both their private and public life, others have often acted unethically. Unethical dilemmas include excessive use of force, racial profiling, extrajudicial killings, and corrupt practices. Recent happenings in the force have revealed incident of grave concerns by officers who share little regard for minorities and the poor in the society.
Despite public outcry, little reforms have been forthcoming. This has led to escalated pedagogic concern in criminal justice about ethics and ethical behavior in law enforcement. This paper focuses on the ethical dilemma facing law enforcement officers. It utilizes a seminal article on the dispensation to create a coherent exemplification. It also reacts to the seminal takeaways, in addition to providing some intriguing issues about limitations in the article and the importance of the topic to criminal justice pedagogy.
Overview of Article
The article ‘Lessons from Tuskegee’ presents groundbreaking facts about unethical practices faced by minorities and law enforcement officers in the USA. The grave challenges of indiscipline and racial prejudice results in demeaning situations where black Americans are mistreated by police officers (Graber, 2016).There are several recorded incidents of misuse of force by officers in the line of duty. This leads to the concern whether these malpractices are racially driven or simply the vestiges and symptoms of a sharply divided society attempting integration.
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In a vividly disaffectionate proportion, several innocent black lives have been lost (Barker, 2011). This is fundamentally diabolical because the law presumes everybody innocent until proven guilty. It is upon these officers to apprehend a suspect and bring them to the corridors of justice. However, in several cases, featuring almost every day in the media, black suspects are killed by officers, in some situations that lives could have been saved instead. The concern by the article is what really leads to such high levels of unending, and unperturbed unethical behavior.
Fast forward, the article notes that campaigns against these unethical practices such as beyond zero and black lives matter have borne little traction. The challenge according to the article can be blamed on lack of a national debate on the issue. It is notable that the political landscape of the nation has largely disfavored the plight of the minority. It has never been the practice in good faith by political systems to consider the views of those that do not translate to a political obstacle. Leading presidential contenders have hence provided little national leadership on the issue. This is a major challenge because the history of the USA has been wrought by great statement who accepted to rise over the status quo such as Abraham Lincoln on the issue of slavery.
The view of the article author is that there is a need to transpose the police force to embody virtues and ethical practices (Graber, 2016). The article draws deeply from the experience of bioethics. The state of affairs in the medical sector, especially research discourses was that of exploitation of the minority and the poor as scientific subjects. The implications of these behaviors led to the medical field, through a series of professional regulation to redefine the behavior and role of a physician. It is universally accepted that due to these series of measures, the health sectors have some of the highest levels of ethics. It is hence an embodied opinion of the author that the law enforcement force needs to reimagine its scope, actions, and practice in a similar way that the medical field reimaged bioethics.
Reaction to the Article
The article raises serious miscarriage of justice issue relating to ethical dilemmas facing law enforcement officers. An ethical dilemma can be defined as a situation whereby arriving at a succinct and universally accepted decision is complicated. There has been a challenge coming up with a global perspective of ethics in several spheres of life because of differing patterns of ideas, culture, religion, and biases among the population (Mackinnon & Fiala, 2018). The law enforcement occupation is not unique as it is run by human beings. According to Aristotle, there lacks an algorithm of defining what is right or wrong in almost every sphere of society.
The challenge by law enforcement officers as raised in the article sublimes to a dilemma because often than not, officers are also made to make quick decisions to defend their lives (Barker, 2011). In several situations, police officers have been killed in cold blood in ghettos, and it is suspected that criminal gangs who run these areas are the minority. The other source of the dilemma has to do with the issue of profiling. Racial profiling is a conflicting topic because officers argue that it is one of the easiest ways of identifying suspects. Liberalist, however, contends that the practice is defeatist in course.
The article focus was diminishing in nature because it did not consider the wider picture of other aspects of law enforcement such as the possibility of getting fair sentencing. With law enforcement force already emerged in racial prejudice, there is no doubt that investigation is based on immutable values such as color. This hence leads to unscrupulous prosecution in front of courts.
Limitation of the Article
This far it is apparent that while the article brought out to light several seminal issues about racial profiling and extra-judicial killings, there are serious limitations its recommendation. By comparing the reform patterns of the law enforcement force to that of bioethics, there is reasonable ground to postulate that as not so tenable and plausible a solution. Law enforcement dilemmas relate to the risk of being killed carried by officers and at the same time with the desire to generalize crime patterns on immutable traits. This is different from unethical scientific dilemmas in the health sector. The dilemma is further complicated by the fact that by killing innocent people because of the color of their skin, the officers are in sharp violations of the fundamental freedoms of the victims.
Conclusion
The importance of studying ethics in criminal justice pedagogy cannot be underestimated. By studying ethics, the learners are made to accept the limitations of their own world view, and the need to uphold universally acceptable virtues which translates to the common good (Mackinnon & Fiala, 2018). The need to maximize moral judgment for the sake of the whole society, based on acceptable and laid down rules is a seminal view of Kant deontology theory of normative ethics.
In summary, law enforcement officers are faced by a myriad of ethical dilemmas in their line of duty. The article noted that there is a dire dearth in ethical practices in law enforcement force concerning the black population in the USA. It is in this view that the ethical dilemma of racial profiling comes into play. There is a need to transpose the law enforcement force to embody values and weaken reliance on immutable traits such as color to investigate and respond to crime.
References
- Barker, Tom. Police ethics: crisis in law enforcement. springfield,illinois,USA: Charles C.Thomas publishers limited, 2011.
- Graber, A. (2016). Lessons from Tuskegee: What Law Enforcement Can Learn from the History of Bioethics. Criminal Justice Ethics 35 (2), 123-141.
- Mackinnon, Barbara, and Andrew Fiala. Ethics: theory and contemporary issues, 9th edition2018.
