Criminal Justice

Ethics and the Criminal Justice System

CCJS 640 Criminal Justice Intelligence Systems and Approaches

November 20, 2011

Introduction

Each component of the criminal justice system has particular ethical guidelines that they follow when composing organizational policies and implementing justice programs. When dealing with intelligence information ethics plays a big part in obtaining and sharing information. Without ethical decision making and guidelines, information sharing would have no set protocols or regulations. All three components of the criminal justice system have ethical guidelines and codes of conduct set up to guide them in the right direction when making intelligence based decisions. Additionally, throughout this course we touched on all three components of the criminal justice system and how they relate to each other when it comes to information sharing and intelligence functions.

Ethics is the act of doing what is right morally in a professional or personal setting (Peak, 2010, p. 337). Of course once ethics are being discussed the actual determination of who is morally and right and wrong follows. There has to be a code of conduct or particular policy implemented within each organization that states what is right and what is wrong. The police, courts, and corrections systems each have their own ethical guidelines, and ethical considerations, that have helped shape their organizational structure. There are two different types of ethics that are considered within the criminal justice system, they are absolute ethics and relative ethics. Absolute ethics is the simplest form, it concludes that something is either right or wrong; there is no in between (Peak, 2010, p.338). Absolute ethics is cut and dry there is no in between or compromise. However, relative ethics is more complicated because there is no determination that is set in stone of what is right and what is wrong (Peak, 2010, p.338). Relative ethics allows for stipulations and considerations...