Ethical Dilemmas In Criminal Justice By Joycelyn Pollock

Criminal Ethics

Criminal Ethics

Since no one in this world is perfect, ethical dilemmas exist on a daily basis. We have all been in situations where we have felt unsure of how to morally proceed on a specific issue. While we all eventually come up with a resolution to our dilemmas, it’s something that we all handle differently, resulting in many ethical systems to choose from. Depending on what a person’s personal values are, he or she might choose to handle a situation differently. In Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions in Criminal Justice by Joycelyn Pollock, there are seven different ethical systems outlined that show how different people deal with certain ethical dilemmas. In her book, Pollock
If he does arrest the chief’s son, he is putting his own job in jeopardy by potentially harming the police chief’s reputation, therefore possibly creating an uncomfortable work environment. The easiest option for the officer would be to make sure no one heard of what happened and hope that the police chief gets his son help so that he does not drive drunk again. However, ethically, it would be wrong to let the chief’s son go free without any consequence to his crime that could’ve potentially killed another person. Using the steps above, the officer should first identify the facts of the situation. Just like the arrest he made the previous day, the officer found himself in front of a man who could potentially hurt another human being due to the immoral choice of driving while drunk. In addition to this, the facts remain that the officer is someone who has the power to make a decision about this topic, yet his duty as a public servant is to enforce the law. Knowing all of this, the officer next needs to consider his values and concepts about those he works with. He will probably feel a loyalty or duty to his police chief which is probably the hardest part of any ethical dilemma. If we didn’t feel morally tied to a specific person or concept, it would be much easier to make the right moral choice. However, because we do feel such emotions, like the officer feels towards his police
They were imprisoned and oppressed, and any citizen who helped them was considered no better than a Jew. While the German government maybe believed they were doing the best for their country, some citizens used their moral compasses engrained in us as human beings. Some German citizens realized that ethically we are not supposed to hurt any other person on the planet and in turn broke the law to help their fellow man, even if that man was a different ethnicity. Yet, others just thought that the government knew best. Those who followed the German government at the time thought they were moral and ethical beings simply because they were following the law. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “A just law is one that is consistent with morality. An unjust law is any that degrades human personality or compels a minority to obey something the majority does not adhere to or is a law that the minority had no part in making” (Pollock 72). Unfortunately, some people don’t realize that not all immoral acts are illegal. Adultery for example, is something that can be considered immoral yet it is not illegal. When becoming a professional, especially in the public sector, it is so important to really take hold of an ethical system and use it to guide one’s self through all the dilemmas that might arise. It isn’t always necessarily easy to determine right from wrong, but ultimately the importance in doing so is