Abstract
What is the relation between professional standards and ethical policing? At first sight the answer to this question may seem obvious: in policing, as elsewhere, professional standards exist in order to promote ethical behaviour. This view, however, is both open to challenge and in need of elaboration. Sceptics can point to a range of non-moral functions and unintended consequences that may be associated with professional standards while those wishing to develop and implement professional standards need an account of how they can promote ethical behaviour. What are the ethical problems that professional standards can help to solve? Can professional standards succeed in solving those problems and if so how? What does this tell us about the sorts of ethical standards that we should seek to implement, and about how we should determine their content? The present chapter can only sketch the outline of an approach to such questions, but in doing so will hopefully identify some of the issues that need to be considered in developing or assessing professional standards.