Ethics in Policing
Ethics involves making the right decisions and doing the right things, that is, analyzing and reflecting on the problems of human conduct (Miller, 2013). Ethics helps the police to develop a grasp of their professional standards, improve their critical thinking, understand their personal responsibility, and measure the consequences of their decisions (Miller & Blackler, 2017). Police institutions always believe that the general public or other non-police institutions do not understand the problems existing within their work and that the expectation of policing are often misplaced and unrealistic.
Most police officers engage in behaviors that are unethical and these behaviors are often derived from the norms of their organizational culture (Miller & Blackler, 2017). This statement typical means that morality of police officers may be utterly opposed to the standard social morality. Some of the common unethical behaviors include corruption, excessive use of force, and racism among others (Wood, Roithmayr & Papachristos, 2019). The paradox of the “Dirty Harry Dilemma” implies that the world of policing gives police officers the capacity to justify their unethical behaviors while keeping their moral self-images (Caldero, Dailey & Withrow, 2018). For instance, “noble cause corruption” may emerge from an excellent and captivating moral outcome which is achieved through “dirty means.” This problem is born when officers violates the civil rights of citizens to achieve moral remedies. Police officers do not necessarily have the intentions of acting without abiding to the laws, but most of them fail to acknowledge the difference between what is right and what is wrong.
Training and education may improve the efficiency of officers in bestowing the necessary ethical behaviors (Blumberg et al., 2019). The main question is, will training and education of officers have significant financial impacts on the agencies?