NCJ Number
86253
Date Published
1982
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This study examines the ethical basis of the right of police officers to inflict harm, using Charles Fried's theory as a point of reference.
Abstract
Central to Fried's theory for the justification of police infliction of harm is the doctrine of double effect, which argues that people may knowingly do something harmful provided it is not their primary intention but an unintended effect of the act. Accordingly, the police may shoot a fleeing felon, knowing it may harm him, provided it is an unintended consequence of their primary objective, which is to stop the person, to secure the arrest, and bring the suspect within the criminal justice system to determine any guilt and specify sanctions. By analogy, a person committing a crime is like a person attacking society. The police act as agents or representatives of society and exercise each person's right of self-defense. This would suggest that an officer's perceptions of harmful criminal conduct which prompt the officer's infliction of harm must be reasonable and nonnegligent. Fried's theory ultimately fails, however, because a police officer is not a representative of society but of one particular institution in it. Police, like other professionals, must provide a defense not just of their individual actions within an institution but of their institution as it functions within one society under contemporary morality that transcends the normative behavior of a given society. To the extent that the social order the police maintain is itself immoral, the actions of individual police officers will be without a moral foundation. Fourteen notes are listed.