Police Ethics-Chapter 4, Why be Ethical? Flashcards
A police term for officers who are cavalier about the use of force and about viewing citizen as the enemy in an “us against them” perspective.
cowboy
Situations wherein two or more alternative behavioral options present themselves and both are ethically defensible.
ethical dilemmas
Situations wherein a person must choose between the ethical thing to do and the easier or more comfortable or less costly thing to do.
ethical questions
A metaphor for the idea that the police are huddled together inside a stockade, surrounded outside by hostile savages.
Fort Apache
Alvin Toffler’s idea (from the book of the same name) that change occurs so abruptly in contemporary society that people are shocked by it.
future shock
Human inclinations to behave like animals or in a natural, or opposed to civilized, way: when people are moved to do what feels good.
hedonistic impulses
A viewpoint that is based on the values, characteristics, and behavior that are believed to be best in human beings, rather than on any supernatural authority.
humanistic perspectives
The propensity for police officers to make judgments about people when they make arrest/no arrest discretionary decisions.
police moralizing
The idea from Muir that the three types of power ought to be utilized in a specific order whenever possible: first exhortation, then reciprocity, and then (and only then) coercion.
power prioritization
Human imagination, emotional subtlety and toughness makes it possible for humankind not to accept the environment but to change it. And that series of inventions, by which humankind from age to age has remade their environment, is a different kind of evolution- not biological, but _______
cultural evolution
With language we create a world of meaning. This is a human world that is just as natural to us as the physical world. Language enables us to think, and the images and references and connections of thought are ______
abstractions
hedonistic impulses
animalistic impulses.
All norms, rules and laws are supposed to be in the best interest of _____
______ norms are created, maintained and abusers are sanctioned in a rather casual way. The form of sanction used for them is merely social ______.
society
Informal
ostracism
Why Be Ethical?
The study will consider several different perspectives on ethical thought, each of which has somewhat different answer to this question.
- Ethical formalism- reason is our natural and governing disposition; to fulfill our human nature we must fulfill our duty to be rational.
- Utilitarianism- An ethic that rests on principle that it is always good to maximize benefit; in the words of JS Mill, we ought always to do “the greatest good for the greatest number.”
- Religion- Created in God’s image, we are endowed by Him with a conscience, the spark of the Divine in us; God will is the ultimate moral authority in a religious life.
Our norms, rules and laws–our ethics–are what makes us different from all other species.
The job of our social institutions-families, schools, religions, economic systems, laws, is to instill these ______
principles in people and maintain adherence to these principles.
The job of police officers, among others, is to?
apply such norms, rules and laws in a way that encourages order and civility among people
To the followers of Ethical Formalism (Immanuel Kant’s philosophy), being ethical is?
being ethical is something that everyone should do because reason requires it of us. Human beings owe a duty to society, to each other and to themselves to be ethical as part of the requirement to behave as rational beings. This duty is ABSOLUTE.
Utilitarians philosopher
John Stuart Mill
Mill’s utilitarians perspective (John Mill’s philosopher) believe that being ethical, is?
something that people ought to do because it involves behaving in the interests of the majority of society’s members. Utilitarian principles suggest that behaving ethically involves care for and nurturing others.
ethical perspective in Religion
Created in Gods image, we are endowed by him with a conscience, the spark of the Divine in us; Gods will is the ultimate moral authority in a religious life.
Two humanistic perspectives
ethical formalism and utilitarianism
Ethics are at the very center of police function. Police make discretionary decisions that must take into consideration the meaning of
justice, of community and of morality
what number of studies indicate that what the police do is service and order maintenance oriented.
90 percent
Anomie
feeling of normlessness
Emile Durkheim conducted the study of suicide and came up with the label
anomie or a feeling of normlessness
those who commit suicide react in a
negative, self deprecating way
On the other hand, those suffering from anomie can react with outrage and in a positive way by
by denying their own problems and proclaiming that it is society that is lost and confused. A more healthy reaction.
Many of the people in our society who are deviants and who act out in a antisocial way suffer from
anomie
Fort Apache syndrome
police operate in an isolated reality, surround by the hostile savages of society.
Social historians tell us that there has been more change in human affairs since World War 11 than if the previous five thousand year.
Daniel Bell and Alvin Toffler
Technological change in combination with the morphing of the social fabric into a new and different reality every few years, create?
anomic feelings of epdiemic proportions becuase people naturally react this way to instability.
The greater number of people in society who develop anomic feelings, the more ?
unstable is that society’s social fabric
It is anomie that drives such movements, created by change of both the _____ and ______ sort.
technological and sociological
book Future Shock
Alvin Toffler- change had become so rapid in contemporary society that human experience was morphing into something unprecedented.
3 different types of power that police can use
- exhortation-convincing people thru logic and reason or morals
- reciprocity- exchanging something to obtain desired behavior from another
- coercion= using threats to harm something of value to person being coerced.
using exhortation and reciprocity before using coercive power as last resort is
power prioritization
Avoiding the use of coercive power. Berkeley PD 1980s.
frustrated with homeless people by using only coercive power, Police developed a program in cooperation with local businesses wherein people could be given coupons by police redeemable for free coffee. this reward for behaving themselves
When police are using non-coercive power, the police are adapting themselves to nature of the situation in order to obtain the desired ends, they are using?
utilitarianism
An arrest for a violent felony must be made irrespective of circumstances, and the identities of participants. This involves invoking?
ethical formalism
Utilitarian principles suggest that behaving ethically involves ______ for and ______ others.
caring and nurturing
Utilitarian suggests that their approach comes from a natural drive that helps society to proceed in the most _____ and ____ manner.
fair and equitable
Utilitarians, when analyzing what to do in any circumstance that requires deciding what is ethical, rules are not ______
absolute
Ethical behavior defines us, not just as intelligent and civilized, but as ______ ____
human beings
All religions take the approach that conscience or the _____ _____, is the “spark” of the divine in human nature
moral sense. Bible tells us that we are created in His image, which theologians and philosophers take to mean that we can communicate with God and that, like Him, we are equipped with a moral sense, a sense of good and evil. This is of course different from the other two humanistic perspectives
Because of mass anomie in America, the police are forever moralizing for other, applying norms, values and laws to human behavior, and deciding who deserves to be ______ and who does not.
sanctioned…Police base their decisions on their own ethics and view of justice in the world—based on their character.
When the police give citizens the chance to decide to do the right thing for themselves, they are acting in an ________ manner
utilitarian
The personal ______ of individual police officers are critical to the impact the entire criminal justice system has on life on the street.
ethics
Within individual officers themselves, the _____ they possess forms the basis for the application of ethics to the everyday problems of people in America.
Character
