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Why Is Ethics Important In Criminal Justice

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Abstract Criminal justice professionals, whether they work in law enforcement, the courts, or corrections, encounter a multitude of situations in which they must make choices that affect people’s lives. The law, or accepted standards of behavior, imposes ethical rules and responsibilities on these professionals. This re-search paper shows reasons as to why ethics are crucial in the criminal justice system. Keywords: ethics, criminal justice Ethics in the Criminal Justice System Why is ethics so important for the Criminal Justice System? Because ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct; which allows us to established a line between good and evil. Ethics gives us …show more content…

Ethics in court In relation to ethics in the court, the same seeps through the courtroom environment during arraignments, grand juries, and trials. Prosecutors have ethical standards to maintain or a defendant might be punished for a crime he didn't commit, they possess a great deal of discretion in deciding who and how to prosecute, they are faced with which charges to pursue and which to drop, which cases to take to the grand jury and how to prosecute a case and whether to pursue the death penalty in homicide cases, in addition to having the responsibility to provide honest, accurate testimony and supportive evidence to justify their claims. Defense attorneys have ethical duties similar to prosecutors in some ways, but, they also have unique duties to their clients; which include refraining from assisting clients to offer false testimony and encourage defendants to rectify fraudulent statements. Judges possess the power to decide whether to deny or accept plea bargains, decisions regarding rules of evidence, and decisions about sentencing, they must interpret the law fairly and independently without personal …show more content…

Spurgeon Hall (2000) states that ethics not only applies to our actions, but equally to our inner dispositions and motives. It is not enough to merely refrain from doing a bad thing, but a person must not even want or intend to do it. A criminal justice professional must be able to justify the decision based on his or her own set of values and beliefs. Becoming an ethical person is a journey in which one must evaluate his or her own morals and values and also face everyday choices that will not only have a lasting effect on themselves, but on their co-workers, the citizens they serve and the offenders in the criminal justice

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