The ethical issues that affect police officers of all ranks and locations are explored in this fascinating introduction to the stark and shocking reality of real-life policing situations. Drawing on examples from the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Asia, and South Africa, this book examines policing incidents from the everyday to public events that capture widespread media attention. Fully updated with revised case studies, this edition offers discussion and analysis of current ethical issues, including zero-tolerance policing; community-based policing; (...) private policing; police involvement with central, state or local governments; the internationalization of policing; specialist roles such as peacekeeping; and civil rights in relation to terrorism laws. (shrink)

POLICE ETHICS – Abstract Mark Lauchs -/- Police are an essential part of the justice system. They are the frontline actors in keeping the peace, social stability and cohesion. Thus good governance relies on honest policing. However, there will always be at least a small group of corrupt police officers, even though Australians are culturally averse to corruption (Khatri, Tsang, & Begley, 2006). There have been many cases where the allegations of police corruption have reached (...) to the highest levels of a state police force (Blanch, 1982) and, in the case of the Fitzgerald Inquiry (Fitzgerald, 1989), ended in a commissioner being convicted of corruption. -/- Any public official who places their own interests before those of the public have corrupted a system in which they are supposed to act as agents of the public, will undermine the good governance of a society (Lauchs, 2007). Police officers attract offers of corruption because of their ability to enforce or ignore the law. Police who are unethical or in financial stress are vulnerable to offers of illicit payments. Longstanding arrangements of corruption within a police branch can lead to a corruption network between police and criminals. Organised police corruption constitutes “social behaviour, conducted in groups within organisations, that is powerful enough to override the officer’s oath of office, personal conscience, departmental regulations and criminal laws.” (Punch, 2000) it is an even greater threat to the community because the damage done has more impact than the sum of the individual acts of corruption. This chapter will discuss the types of police corruption and focus on the organisation as the source of core police culture. -/- . (shrink)

Foreword - The Honorable Gerald E. Ragan -- Introduction -- Code of Ethics [adopted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police] -- Ch. 1 Code of ethics -- Ch. 2 Practicality versus the code of ethics -- Ch. 3 Gratuities -- Ch. 4 Police solicitations -- Ch. 6 Personal matters -- Ch. 7 The jaded policeman -- Ch. 8 The administration of discipline -- Ch. 9 Where are we going? -- Epilogue -- Index.

The police are one of the most powerful and important forces for any country. The main task of the police is to install a sense of security in the ordinary citizens and to protect their life and property when they are in danger. Bangladeshi Police have a glorious past with tremendous achievement. Especially in our great liberation war in 1971, they played an important role in achieving our liberation. Eliminating terrorism & militancy and others several operation that (...) leads with the risk of their life. But there are still a lot of accusations against the police force. Like- abusing of power, Misconducting with the people, Committing crossfire defying the high-court order, Wearing white dress when they move to detain criminals, Arresting without warrant, and many other including Bribery, Extortion, Trading Drug and Yaba, Playing partisan role, keeping Bad association, Filing case against deceased man, Charging sheet against the infant who has not been born yet, Enforcing disappearance, Suppressing the freedom of express, Violating Human rights, Doing anti-social activities such as rape, forcible extortion, drinking alcohol, etc. are the real scenario of Bangladesh Police. Policing ethics or related unethical behaviors, in particular, are shaped by both societal perceptions and organizational socialization of the police personnel on how authority should be exercised, as well as the latter's relationship with the socio-political and economic structures overtime. This paper proposes to explain the role of police as the main law enforcement agency in any democratic country. An Attempt has been made to bring different perspectives of ethics which comprises views of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Immanuel Kant, J S Mill and John Rawls. The paper focuses on police Ethics. Police ethics’ reflects the society and the regulations that shape the policing system. Discuss the results and analysis of the consequences of moral degradation caused by the Police. Explore the police brutality because of the lack of Ethics to highlight the public's attitude towards police. The ethical standards and the code of conduct Police practitioners should actually abide by is an ongoing debate. (shrink)

In 2014, questionable police killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice sparked mass protests and put policing at the center of national debate. Mass protests erupted again in 2020 after the brutal police killing of George Floyd. These and other incidents have put a spotlight on a host of issues that threaten the legitimacy of policing—excessive force, racial bias, over-policing of marginalized communities, historic injustices that remain unaddressed, and new technology that increases police powers. This (...) introduction gives an overview of these ethical challenges facing police today and the democratic institutions that oversee them. It then outlines the various interdisciplinary perspectives—from Black studies, criminology, history, law, philosophy, political science, and sociology—collected in the volume. Together, these contributions aim to clarify the question of which ethical principles should guide police, where current practices fall short, and what strategies hold the most promise for addressing these failures. (shrink)

Monetary intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the dark side of monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics—dishonesty. Dishonesty, a risky prospect, involves cost–benefit analysis of self-interest. We frame good or bad barrels in the environmental context as a proxy of high or low probability of getting caught for dishonesty, respectively. We theorize: The magnitude and intensity of (...) the relationship between love of money and dishonest prospect may reveal how individuals frame dishonesty in the context of two levels of subjective norm—perceived corporate ethical values at the micro-level and Corruption Perceptions Index at the macro-level, collected from multiple sources. Based on 6382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents, our cross-level three-way interaction effect illustrates: As expected, managers in good barrels, mixed barrels, and bad barrels display low, medium, and high magnitude of dishonesty, respectively. With high CEV, the intensity is the same across cultures. With low CEV, the intensity of dishonesty is the highest in high CPI entities —the Enron Effect, but the lowest in low CPI entities. CPI has a strong impact on the magnitude of dishonesty, whereas CEV has a strong impact on the intensity of dishonesty. We demonstrate dishonesty in light of monetary values and two frames of social norm, revealing critical implications to the field of behavioral economics and business ethics. (shrink)

The killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and others have instigated widespread debate concerning the ethics and politics of police behavior toward young black men in America. In this article, I show how Josiah Royce’s philosophy of loyalty provides a useful theoretical framework for diagnosing and working to overcome strained relations between police and black citizens in the United States. I begin by establishing the relevance of Royce’s thought to (...) the realm of police ethics. Then, I argue that Royce’s notion of loyalty to loyalty is a useful and powerful lens through which we can examine the practice of police discretion, particularly as it comes to bear on racial profiling and use of force. I conclude by offering what I regard as Roycean recommendations aimed at ameliorating the fractured relationship between police and blacks in America today. (shrink)

The killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and others have instigated widespread debate concerning the ethics and politics of police behavior toward young black men in America. This article shows how Josiah Royce’s philosophy of loyalty provides a useful theoretical framework for diagnosing and working to overcome strained relations between police and black citizens in the United States. The author begins by establishing the relevance of Royce’s thought to the (...) realm of police ethics. Then, it is argued that Royce’s notion of loyalty to loyalty is a useful and powerful lens through which the practice of police discretion may be examined, particularly as it comes to bear on racial profiling and use of force. The author concludes by offering Roycean recommendations aimed at ameliorating the fractured relationship between police and blacks in America today. (shrink)

This book is the most systematic, comprehensive and philosophically sophisticated discussion of police ethics yet published. It offers an in-depth analysis of the ethical values that police, as servants of the community, should uphold as they go about their task. The book considers the foundations and purpose of police authority in broad terms but also tackles specific problems such as accountability, the use of force, deceptive stratagems used to gain information or trap the criminally intentioned, corruption, (...) and the tension between personal values and communal concerns. Offering the fullest, most rigorous and up-to-date treatment of police ethics currently available, this book will be a perfect textbook in courses on applied ethics in philosophy departments or police and criminal justice ethics in departments of criminology and law schools. (shrink)

_Investigative Ethics: Ethics for Police Detectives and Criminal Investigators_ presents applied philosophical analyses of the ethical issues that arise for police detectives and other investigators in contemporary society. Explores ethical issues relating to investigative independence, rights of victims and suspects, use of informants, entrapment, privacy and surveillance, undercover operations, deception, and suspect interviewing Represents the first monograph providing a detailed consideration of ethical issues in police investigations Features authorship by an applied philosopher specializing in (...) class='Hi'>police ethics, and a former UK senior police officer Combined authorship ensures the text is anchored in actual police practice as well as providing high quality ethical analysis. (shrink)

The American justice system, from police departments to the courts, is increasingly turning to information technology for help identifying potential offenders, determining where, geographically, to allocate enforcement resources, assessing flight risk and the potential for recidivism amongst arrestees, and making other judgments about when, where, and how to manage crime. In particular, there is a focus on machine learning and other data analytics tools, which promise to accurately predict where crime will occur and who will perpetrate it. Activists and (...) academics have begun to raise critical questions about the use of these tools in policing contexts. In this chapter, I review the emerging critical literature on predictive policing and contribute to it by raising ethical questions about the use of predictive analytics tools to identify potential offenders. Drawing from work on the ethics of profiling, I argue that the much-lauded move from reactive to preemptive policing can mean wrongfully generalizing about individuals, making harmful assumptions about them, instrumentalizing them, and failing to respect them as full ethical persons. I suggest that these problems stem both from the nature of predictive policing tools and from the sociotechnical contexts in which they are implemented... (shrink)

John Kleinig, The Ethics of Policing Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. viii + 335pp.

Monetary Intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the bright side of Monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics, frames money attitude in the context of pay and life satisfaction, and controls money at the macro-level and micro-level. We theorize: Managers with low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior will have high subjective well-being: pay satisfaction and (...) quality of life. Data collected from 6586 managers in 32 cultures across six continents support our theory. Interestingly, GDP per capita is related to life satisfaction, but not to pay satisfaction. Individual income is related to both life and pay satisfaction. Neither GDP nor income is related to Happiness. Our theoretical model across three GDP groups offers new discoveries: In high GDP entities, “high income” not only reduces aspirations—“Rich, Motivator, and Power,” but also promotes stewardship behavior—“Budget, Give/Donate, and Contribute” and appreciation of “Achievement.” After controlling income, we demonstrate the bright side of Monetary Intelligence: Low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior define Monetary Intelligence. “Good apples enjoy good quality of life in good barrels.” This notion adds another explanation to managers’ low magnitude of dishonesty in entities with high Corruption Perceptions Index. In low GDP entities, high income is related to poor Budgeting skills and escalated Happiness. These managers experience equal satisfaction with pay and life. We add a new vocabulary to the conversation of monetary intelligence, income, GDP, happiness, subjective well-being, good and bad apples and barrels, corruption, and behavioral ethics. (shrink)

Terrorism, the use of military force in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and the fatal police shootings of unarmed persons have all contributed to renewed interest in the ethics of police and military use of lethal force and its moral justification. In this book, philosopher Seumas Miller analyzes the various moral justifications and moral responsibilities involved in the use of lethal force by police and military combatants, relying on a distinctive normative teleological account of institutional roles. His (...) conception constitutes a novel alternative to prevailing reductive individualist and collectivist accounts. As Miller argues, police and military uses of lethal force are morally justified in part by recourse to fundamental natural moral rights and obligations, especially the right to personal self-defense and the moral obligation to defend the lives of innocent others. Yet the moral justification for police and military use of lethal force is to some extent role-specific. Both police officers and military combatants evidently have an institutionally-based moral duty to put themselves in harm's way to protect others. Under some circumstances, however, police have an institutionally based moral duty to use lethal force to uphold the law; and military combatants have an institutionally based moral duty to use lethal force to win wars. Two key notions in play are joint action and the natural right to self-defense. Miller uses a relational individualist theory of joint actions to construct the notion of multi-layered structures of joint action in order to explicate organizational action. He also provides a novel theory of justifiable killing in self-defense. Over the course of his book, Miller covers a variety of urgent topics, such as police shootings of armed offenders, police shooting of suicide-bombers, targeted killing, autonomous weapons, humanitarian armed intervention, and civilian immunity. (shrink)

This scenario-based workbook is designed to encourage police and corrections recruits and officers to think critically and carefully about their actions by providing practical scenarios police and corrections personnel may encounter in their careers.

Over the past decade, police departments in many countries have experimented with and increasingly adopted the use of police body-worn cameras. This article aims to examine the moral issues raised by the use of PBWCs, and to provide an overall assessment of the conditions under which the use of PBWCs is morally permissible. It first reviews the current evidence for the effects of using PBWCs. On the basis of this review the article sets out a teleological argument for (...) the use of PBWCs. The final two sections of the article review two deontological objections to the use of PBWCs: the idea that use of PBWCs is based on or expresses disrespectful mistrust, and the idea that the use of PBWCs violates a right to privacy. The article argues that neither of these objections is persuasive, and concludes that we should conditionally accept and support the use of PBWCs. (shrink)

Since the first edition was published in 1989, Character and Cops has been considered the bible of police ethics training.

Corruption involves greed, money, and risky decision-making. We explore the love of money, pay satisfaction, probability of risk, and dishonesty across cultures. Avaricious monetary aspiration breeds unethicality. Prospect theory frames decisions in the gains-losses domain and high-low probability. Pay dissatisfaction (in the losses domain) incites dishonesty in the name of justice at the individual level. The Corruption Perceptions Index, CPI, signals a high-low probability of getting caught for dishonesty at the country level. We theorize that decision-makers adopt avaricious love-of-money aspiration (...) as a lens and frame dishonesty in the gains-losses domain (pay satisfaction-dissatisfaction, Level 1) and high-low probability (CPI, Level 2) to maximize expected utility and ultimate serenity. We challenge the myth: Pay satisfaction mitigates dishonesty across nations consistently. Based on 6500 managers in 32 countries, our cross-level three-dimensional visualization offers the following discoveries. Under high aspiration conditions, pay dissatisfaction excites the highest- (third-highest) avaricious justice-seeking dishonesty in high (medium) CPI nations, supporting the certainty effect. However, pay satisfaction provokes the second-highest avaricious opportunity-seizing dishonesty in low CPI entities, sustaining the possibility effect—maximizing expected utility. Under low aspiration conditions, high pay satisfaction consistently leads to low dishonesty, demonstrating risk aversion—achieving ultimate serenity. We expand prospect theory from a micro and individual-level theory to a cross-level theory of monetary wisdom across 32 nations. We enhance the S-shaped Curve to three 3-D corruption surfaces across three levels of the global economic pyramid, providing novel insights into behavioral economics, business ethics, the environment, and responsibility. (shrink)

Since the first edition was published in 1989, Character and Cops has been considered the bible of police ethics training. The book is a comprehensive guide to the ethical challenges faced daily by police officers, especially in times of heightened security. The updated sixth edition features a new foreword by David Bores, a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States military police, and a new chapter titled 'From War Veterans to Peace Officers,' which explores policies for (...) incorporating soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan into the domestic police force. (shrink)

This article reports the findings from a study that investigates the relationship between ethical climates and police whistle-blowing on five forms of misconduct in the State of Georgia. The results indicate that a friendship or team climate generally explains willingness to blow the whistle, but not the actual frequency of blowing the whistle. Instead, supervisory status, a control variable investigated in previous studies, is the most consistent predictor of both willingness to blow the whistle and frequency of blowing the (...) whistle. Contrary to popular belief, the results also generally indicate that police are more inclined than civilian employees to blow the whistle in Georgia - in other words, they are less inclined to maintain a code of silence. (shrink)

The number of police departments carrying Narcan keeps increasing at a fast pace throughout the U.S., as it is considered an effective measure to fight the opioid epidemic. However, there have been strong oppositions to the idea of the police Narcan use. Still, in 2018, the nation is debating about it. Though not clearly visible to the public, there are important ethical arguments against the police Narcan use which necessarily involve understanding of the ethical roles and responsibilities (...) of police as the law enforcement agency and apprehension of the moral status of a non-therapeutic opioid use. The authors of the paper investigate, primarily, the existing ethical controversies surrounding the police Narcan use while touching upon the issue of the decriminalizing drug policy in the U.S. The authors conclude that the police can carry and administer Narcan without self-contradiction and that the policymakers’ investigation on the drug decriminalization policy should begin with the understanding of the “common morality” of the American public, the ethical view shared and practiced by the greatest number of people. (shrink)

Ross Swope focuses on seven building blocks of integrity to help police departments and other law enforcement organizations strengthen their ethical culture, thereby restoring an environment of trust, confidence, and cooperation with the public. To illustrate the importance and impact of his approach, he weaves in stories from his forty-three-year career in law enforcement, ranging from his early years as a uniformed patrolman to his final role as a chief of police.

This article offers a normative analysis of some of the most controversial incidents involving police—what I call police-generated killings. In these cases, bad police tactics create a situation where deadly force becomes necessary, becomes perceived as necessary, or occurs unintentionally. Police deserve blame for such killings because they choose tactics that unnecessarily raise the risk of deadly force, thus violating their obligation to prioritize the protection of life. Since current law in the United States fails to (...) ban many bad tactics, police- generated killings often are treated as “lawful but awful.” To address these killings, some call on changes to departmental policies or voluntary reparations by local governments, yet such measures leave in place a troubling gap between ethics and law. I argue that police-generated killings merit legal sanctions by appealing to a relevant analogy: self-generated self-defense, where the person who engages in self-defense started the trouble. The persistent lack of accountability for police-generated killings threatens life, police legitimacy, and trust in democratic institutions. The article closes by identifying tools in law and policy to address this challenge. (shrink)

This paper synthesizes scholarship from several academic disciplines to identify and analyze five major ethical challenges facing data-driven policing. Because the term “data-driven policing” emcompasses a broad swath of technologies, we first outline several data-driven policing initiatives currently in use in the United States. We then lay out the five ethical challenges. Certain of these challenges have received considerable attention already, while others have been largely overlooked. In many cases, the challenges have been articulated in the context of related discussions, (...) but their distinctively ethical dimensions have not been explored in much detail. Our goal here is to articulate and clarify these ethical challenges, while also highlighting areas where these issues intersect and overlap. Ultimately, responsible data-driven policing requires collaboration between communities, academics, technology developers, police departments, and policy-makers to confront and address these challenges. And as we will see, it may also require critically reexamining the role and value of police in society. (shrink)

This article examines the inherently ethical nature of resource allocation in policing. Decision-makers must make trade-offs between values such as efficiency vs. equity, individual vs. collective benefit, and adopt principles of distribution which allocate limited resources fairly. While resource allocation in healthcare has been the subject of extensive discussion in both practitioner and academic literature, ethical resource allocation in policing has received almost no attention. We first consider whether approaches used in healthcare settings would be suitable for policing. Whilst there (...) are some high-level similarities in the relevant ethical considerations and processes—such as aiming for efficient and equitable resource deployment—there are also fundamental differences between the two settings, which we argue necessitate a different approach. These differences include: (1) greater diversity and incommensurability of the benefits of policing, (2) more frequent non-linearity in returns on policing investment, (3) greater “ethical divisibility” (permissible scaling down) of programs in policing, (4) a requirement to assess “need” for policing resources at the collective (rather than individual) level, and (5) clearer primacy of equity considerations in policing. Having drawn out the implications of these differences, we sketch some tentative proposals for ethical resource allocation in policing. (shrink)

This volume considers the ethics of policing and imprisonment, focusing particularly on mass incarceration and police shootings in the United States. The contributors consider the ways in which non-ideal features of the criminal justice system―features such as the prevalence of guns in America, political pressures, considerations of race and gender, and the lived experiences of people in jails and prisons―impinge upon conclusions drawn from more idealized models of punishment and law enforcement. There are a number of common themes (...) running throughout the chapters. One is the contrast between idealism and realism about justice. Another is the attention to harmful consequences, not only of prisons themselves, but to the events that often precede incarceration, including encounters with police and pre-trial detention. A third theme is the legacy of racism in the United States and the role that the criminal justice system plays in perpetuating racial oppression. (shrink)

Protecting the people we experiment on --"Inside the black box" : becoming and being IRB members -- Weighing risks and benefits and undue inducement -- Defining research and how good it needs to be -- What to tell subjects : battles over consent forms -- From "nitpicky" to "user-friendly" : inter-IRB variations and their causes -- Federal agencies vs. local IRBs -- The roles of industry -- The local ecologies of institutions -- Trusting vs. policing researchers -- Bad behavior: research (...) integrity -- Researchers abroad : studies in the developing world -- Changing national policies -- Conclusions : other changes. (shrink)

From George Floyd to Breonna Taylor, the brutal deaths of Black citizens at the hands of law enforcement have brought race and policing to the forefront of national debate in the United States. In The Ethics of Policing, Ben Jones and Eduardo Mendieta bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars across the social sciences and humanities to reevaluate the role of the police and the ethical principles that guide their work. With contributors such as Tracey Meares, Michael Walzer, (...) and Franklin Zimring, this volume covers timely topics including race and policing, the use of aggressive tactics and deadly force, police abolitionism, and the use of new technologies like drones, body cameras, and predictive analytics, providing different perspectives on the past, present, and future of policing, with particular attention to discriminatory practices that have historically targeted Black and Brown communities. This volume offers cutting-edge insight into the ethical challenges facing the police and the institutions that oversee them. As high-profile cases of police brutality spark protests around the country, The Ethics of Policing raises questions about the proper role of law enforcement in a democratic society. (shrink)

This significant volume provides an integrated mix of ethico-philosophical analysis combined with practitioner knowledge and experience to examine and address the large number of difficult ethical questions involved in modern-day policing. An invaluable g.

Janet Malek has recently argued that the religious worldview of the clinical ethics consultant should play no normative role in clinical ethics consultation. What are the theological implications of a normatively secular clinical ethics? I argue that Malek’s proposal constitutes an irreligious clinical ethics, which commits multiple metaphysical harms. First, I summarize Malek’s key claims for a secular clinical ethics. Second, I explicate both John Milbank’s notion of ontological violence and Timothy Murphy’s irreligious bioethics to (...) show how they apply to Malek’s secular clinical ethics, resulting in an irreligious clinical ethics. Third, I then show how an irreligious clinical ethics commits metaphysical harms to patients, clinical ethics consultants, and the institution of clinical ethics consultation. I conclude that Malek’s proposal for an irreligious clinical ethics must be rejected to maintain the metaphysical integrity of clinical ethics consultants, patients, and the institution of clinical ethics consultation. (shrink)

Abstract The use of informers is morally problematic for police institutions, for investigation managers, and for those individuals either who act as informers or who have daily responsibility for handling informers. This paper examines the moral issues concerning informers at each of these levels. Recourse to informers can be accommodated within Miller and Blackler's moral theory of policing. Within this context, criteria for the morally justifiable deployment of informers are proposed and supplemented with further proposed criteria for morally justifiable (...) informer participation in crime. Morally justifiable recruitment of informers is also considered. Despite directly serving the purpose of policing, informers do not incur police professional obligations. (shrink)

Policing is a highly pragmatic occupation. It is designed to achieve the important social ends of peacekeeping and public safety, and is empowered to do so using means that are ordinarily seen as problematic; that is, the use of force, deception, and invasions of privacy, along with considerable discretion. It is often suggested that the ends of policing justify the use of otherwise problematic means, but do they? This book explores this question from a philosophical perspective. The relationship between ends (...) and means has a long and contested history both in moral/practical reasoning and public policy. Looking at this history through the lens of policing, criminal justice philosopher John Kleinig explores the dialectic of ends and means and offers a new, sharpened perspective on police ethics. After tracing the various ways in which ends and means may be construed, the book surveys a series of increasingly concrete issues, focusing especially on those that arise in policing contexts. The competing moral demands made by ends and means culminate in considerations of noble cause corruption, dirty hands theory, lesser degradations, and finally, those means deemed impermissible by the majority in Western culture, such as torture. nstrued, the book surveys a series of increasingly concrete issues, focusing especially on those that arise in policing contexts. The competing moral demands made by ends and means culminate in considerations of noble cause corruption, dirty hands theory, lesser degradations, and finally, those means deemed impermissible by the majority in Western culture, such as torture. (shrink)

How can we enhance police integrity? The authors surveyed over 3000 police officers from 30 U.S. police departments on how they would respond to typical scenarios where integrity is challenged. They studied three police agencies which scored highly on the integrity scale: Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; and St. Petersburg, Florida. The authors conclude that enhancing police integrity goes well beyond culling out "bad apple" police officers. Police administrators should focus on four (...) aspects: organizational rulemaking; detecting, investigating and disciplining rule violations; circumscribing the informal "code of silence" that prohibits police from reporting the misconduct of their colleagues; and understanding the influence of public expectations and agency history. (shrink)

In this article, we explore some of the roles of cameras in policing in the United States. We outline the trajectory of key new media technologies, arguing that cameras and social media together generate the ambient surveillance through which graphic violence is now routinely captured and circulated. Drawing on Michel Foucault, we suggest that there are important intersections between this video footage and police subjectivity, and propose to look at two: recruit training at the Washington state Basic Law Enforcement (...) Academy and the Seattle Police Department’s body-worn camera project. We analyze these cases in relation to the major arguments for and against initiatives to increase police use of cameras, outlining what we see as techno-optimistic and techno-pessimistic positions. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, we argue for a third position that calls for field-based inquiry into the specific co-production of socio-techno subjectivities. (shrink)

' ...this volume extracts the moral and ethical conflicts presented by everyday police activity and makes explicit the assumption that shape the police response... '.

Criticisms of how police exercise their authority are neither new nor uncommon. Police officers have considerable power, and they often must draw on that power in complex and pressing circumstances. This collection of essays by fifteen leading specialists in ethics and criminal justice examines the nature of police discretion and its many varieties. The essays explore the kinds of judgment calls police officers frequently must make: When should they get involved? Whom should they watch? What (...) constitutes a 'disturbance of the peace'? What resources should be devoted to a situation? Does social welfare take precedence over law enforcement? Under what conditions, if any, may police officers engage in selective enforcement of the law? Each essay or pair of essays is followed by a response, making Handled with Discretion an excellent text for stimulating discussion in the classroom. (shrink)