Ethics can be considered as a branch of knowledge that majors on moral principles. According to Braswell et al. (2017 ), ethics are the ethical principles that oversee an individual's behavior or the philosophies that emerge when conducting an action. The good deeds in society are considered desirable ethics that ensure people live according to the set rules and regulations. Ethics is also concerned with the habits, customs, dispositions, or characters of people. In the criminal justice system, ethics plays a major role in ensuring free, fair, and timely justice administration. The principles are essential because they help people make positive impacts by creating the right or informed decisions. The court systems across the world use similar law applications and in consideration of the guiding principles. People are always encouraged to make ethical choices and apply ethics in all aspects of their lives. This paper aims at exploring the role and importance of ethics and integrity in the criminal justice system. In the criminal justice system, the application of desirable ethical behavior sets the standards and ensures the set goals and objectives are achieved. Ethical behavior entails fairness, integrity, honesty, and various positive qualities of an individual ( Cox, 2020 ). All professions require the application of ethics to ensure effectiveness and efficiency. For instance, police ethics are the guidelines for behavior the monitors' law administrative officials built on what humanity considers as correct or wrong. Ethical behavior forms the very basis of the criminal justice system. People working in criminal justice find themselves in a challenging profession due to the decisions they have to make during their day-to-day activities. The police's primary role is to enforce law and order and provide maximum protection for the general public ( Barabas et al., 2018 ). Police officers believe that their job is one of the hardest after various undesirable incidences amongst police and Black Americans have led to conflict. For instance, in the United States, the police have been involved in killing the Black Americans in the streets, citing the lack of ethics in maintaining law and order. When death rates increase due to police killings, human rights activists unite to reject police's unethical acts. They believe that the prevalence of peace is essential in society to ensure people live in harmony. Public trust is vital in the criminal justice system to ensure that professionals achieve their set objectives in this field. In cases where the general public feels that the individuals tasked with enforcing the law are not doing so in a fairway, cooperation and understanding fail between the public and law enforcement agencies. To ensure that ethical issues in criminal justice have been adhered to strictly, the International Association of Chiefs of Police sets a code of ethics that functions as a foundation upon which ethical practices in law enforcement are embodied. Police officers should always uphold a code of conduct to ensure that the world remains a better place. Ethical issues in the criminal justice system exist due to law enforcement agencies' beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. In 1957, the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics was approved to ensure that the officers could not exploit the general public. This code of ethics acts as a preface to law enforcement agencies' and an obligation to the people they serve with respect and dignity. The first principle is to serve the community. They do so by safeguarding the individuals within the community by protecting them against violence, oppression, and deception. Police officers should be leading by example and ensure they act with integrity, honesty, and courage in the scope of jeopardy and self-restraint. Integrity works along with honesty in a very substantial manner. According to Guy and Ely (2018), a person of integrity is one who chooses courage over being comfortable, fast overdoing things easily, being right over fun, and practicing desirable core values. Integrity defines who people are and why they choose to do what they want. People in the criminal justice system are always advised to be integral because integrity is important for everything successful. The truth, honesty, and integrity are some of the utmost essences for progressive and prolonged success. When success is achieved with the compromise of integrity, failure is always imminent. Choosing one's thoughts and actions over other people’s opinions is essential rather than engaging in personal gain activities. In ethics, individuals should understand how they make and follow up ethical decisions to ensure they make the right choices. By taking a systematic approach, a person can set aims and objectives to ensure their success in the future. They are various models of the ethical decision-making process. Moral reasoning and behavior depict that moral imagination is necessary as it leads to recognizing that all routine relationships and choices have a particular ethical dimension. Moral identification and ordering is another element to be considered in behavior and reasoning. They refer to the ability to identify essential issues, sorting out competing values, and determining priorities. Additionally, moral evaluation entails the use of analytical skills in evaluating options. The urge to analyze decisions helps people to make desirable life choices. The police officers should have the ability to tolerate moral ambiguity and disagreements. People always differ in decision-making as this leads to disagreements. For instance, differences might arise when individuals disagree on values and plans of action to undertake. Subsequently, integrating moral competence in decision-making helps in arriving at amicable solutions. Moral competence integration includes anticipating possible ethical dilemmas; any decision is considered and leads others in ethical decision deliberations. The moral obligation in ethical decision-making acts as a motivating factor that engages people and assists in making moral judgment and ensuring ethical decisions. Ethics considers integrity as truthfulness, honesty, and accuracy of a person's actions. Integrity in criminal justice is regarded as being the opposite of hypocrisy. When making judgments, the integrity standards entail internal consistency as a virtue, and give suggestions to the parties upholding within themselves deceptively inconsistent values should explain for the discrepancy or adjust their dogmas. Integrity in policing ensures that individuals who labor for the police preserve and enforce the importance of the service delivery and strive to ensure that the right thing is done in all situations to gain the general public's confidence. A severe impediment to the triumph of any anti-corruption determinations is corrupt justice division institutions. According to Elias (2018), if the criminal justice division is ethically compromised, the authorized institutional mechanisms set to curtail corruption, however well-targeted, authentic, or efficient, tend to remain crippled. The significant impacts of crime on the decree of law and justifiable progression are not usually damaging but vicious in particular when the criminal justice, which should symbolize the doctrines of independence, impartiality, equality, and integrity, are destabilized. Any disrespect for the equivalent presentation of the law undermines public institutions' validity and underwrites to impunity. When integrity lacks in the criminal justice system, challenges in clamming rights and freedom in courts of law fail and create an environment of legal uncertainty and ultimately deter the spirit of hard work and unity. A corruption action one phase of the justice system chain can culminate in severely harming the entire process. It can also invalidate its importance and eroding the general public conviction in law enforcement. Due to the lack of immunity to corruption, nations worldwide must recognize the specific responsibility and liability of criminal justice institutions regarding corruption and participate in progressive efforts to create independent, accountable, ethical justice systems. The UN, for instance, helps member states in confronting the issue of corruption in several approaches. The separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive branch of government, training on corruption, and elevating court fines in corruption are some of the UN's strategies in ensuring integrity in the criminal justice division. Policing constitutes the maintenance and enforcement of law and order by the police. According to Brown et al. (2018), ethics and integrity are essential constituents in the scope of policing. The integrity and ethics do not necessarily explain whether the general public on whether the police are linked to corruption cases and misconduct. Integrity and ethics enable the police to make informed decisions and treat individuals fairly—any mistrust between civilians and the police results in undesirable actions such as activists rioting.
The police usually are constrained in their endeavor to fight crime and ensure the general public's safety. The police's work is to decide the type of laws to enforce; a practice referred to as discretion. The objective of ethics and integrity is to monitor and evaluate the policing styles, commonly known as the legalistic, service, and watchman style. The legalistic policing style tends to exercise little discretion and imposes law to encourage victims to sign objections. They also make more arrests and book lawbreakers with tickets. The watchman style distinguishes between two decrees of policing, which are law enforcement and order preservation. Subsequently, the service style share features with the legalistic and watchman claims. The policing culture offers its services without fear or favor, guided by desirable core values of integrity, accountability, transparency, honesty, and hard work, among many others. When ethics and integrity are applied in policing, it ensures a subconscious attitude towards behavior and events to spot integrity or trust destruction. Service delivery by the police should be smooth to ensure effectiveness and efficiency. Policing in a democracy calls for high integrity and ethics levels if it is conventional to the citizens ( Westmarland & Rowe, 2018 ). A police force upholding values of integrity is one with minimal corruption and misconduct. The problem of misconduct is entrenched in policing and is usually episodic and confined to individual performance. It affects any policing organizational culture, which is the most vital factor in shaping any police behavior. Top officials in the police force should ensure ethics and integrity are practiced in policing.
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Conclusion
Ethics entail a system of moral principles and is mainly concerned about the good deeds practiced by individuals in a society. The moral set code of conduct that drives people to do the right thing correctly depicts the importance of ethics. In the criminal justice system, ethics and integrity play a major role in ensuring the service delivery is effective and efficient. Public trust between the police and the general public should always be maintained professionally to hinder any fallout from happening. Policing is one of the sectors faced with challenges in administering criminal justice. The police force is selective in the enforcement of specific laws and regulations. It is typically concerned with only the rules that are beneficial to them and those that seem easy to administer. When the criminal justice system observes ethics and integrity, there will be peace and coordination between the general public. Integrity plays a significant role in ensuring that police behavior, attitude, and beliefs align with justice's free and fair administration.
References
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