Ethical Considerations

Ethics and Policing

Ethics is generally concerned with the study and analysis of what constitutes good or bad, right or wrong behavior. For present purposes, ethics shall be defined as the study of the general nature of morals and the specific moral choices an individual makes in relating to others; in this case, as they apply to police conduct. Morality shall be defined as principles or standards with respect to right or wrong conduct. These principles of behavior as right or wrong relate to one’s interactions with others. In this sense, a moral being is one who takes the welfare of others into account. Here, the most basic of all moral ideas comes to mind: the Golden Rule. Simply stated, the Golden Rule is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12, Bible ).

The present analysis involves moral ideas and standards as they apply to the police profession, which can be subsumed under the general rubric professional ethics. From this conceptualization it can be deduced that ethical police behavior is quite simply, moral behavior in a professional (police) setting.

A logical question that might be asked is, “How are police ethics different from any other ethics?” The difference lies with the distinctive demands placed on police in the roles they play and situations they encounter. For example, police officers can, under their position of authority, take away someone’s freedom by arrest or by use deadly force, if necessary, in the performance of their duties. From a social scientific perspective, this attribution [Page 151]of rightness or wrongness in terms of morality is somewhat problematic because a goal of science is value-free objectivity, and labeling someone as moral or immoral is somewhat of a contradiction. Nonetheless, this analysis will proceed by borrowing assumptions and ideas from social control theory. Here, it is assumed that individuals are born amoral, that is, with no concept of morality. Starting with no conception of morality, a person generally goes through the process of socialization where one becomes a more or less moral person. It is the idea of “more or less” that is important because this moral status of the individual members of society is assumed to vary along a dimension from amoral to highly moral. For the sake of anchoring this continuum, we might think of the almost totally amoral psychopath on one end of the continuum. Such individuals are totally self-interested and not concerned about others. They only concern themselves with the effect their behavior has on others to the extent that it might benefit or harm their own interests. At the other end of the continuum is the Mother Teresa-type individual, who is virtually selfless and gives continually and freely to others. This cognitive dimension, therefore, represents the individual’s intentions or motivations for behavior relative to others. Clearly there is more to being a moral person than whether one has good intentions or motivations relative to others. This is where the behavioral dimension fits in.

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