NCJ Number
85090
Date Published
1981
Length
16 pages
Annotation
Basic ethical emphases of the components of the criminal justice system should be human dignity and individual responsibility, accountability, and freedom.
Abstract
Certain assumptions must underlie ethical directions for the components of the criminal justice system. One assumption is that citizens are ultimately responsible for the quality of community life. This assumption repudiates the tendency for citizens to thrust responsibility for community order and harmony upon criminal justice professionals. When a community is disrupted by crime, citizens must exert efforts to restore values of respect for property and persons to prevent the community from suffering further decline because residents no longer care about the quality of their community. Another assumption crucial to the building of ethical directions in criminal justice is that the substance and procedures of law are applied consistently and in accord with the facts of a given situation. This implies respect for all persons and equal treatment of all persons. Also crucial to the ethics of criminal justice is the safeguarding of the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, as well as the protection of the poor, weak, and unpopular. A final assumption is that the community must emphasize the rights of victims and institutionalize services to victims that help relieve the loss and suffering caused by criminal behavior against them. The foundation of all these assumptions is that humans are moral agents and as such are responsible for their actions and that morality manifested in a system of laws and precepts is binding upon rational people because it accords with rational perceptions of the behavior required for order and harmony in society, a basic longing of human beings. Nine footnotes are listed.