As a scholar in criminal justice, you have been assigned by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to...

Question

As a scholar in criminal justice, you have been assigned by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to conduct research to critically assess the reasons for the increase in unethical behavior and lack of integrity in law enforcement. You have been asked to provide suggestions for necessary administrative changes to be implemented and to evaluate the existing ethics training provided to all officers and civilian personnel within the agency. The vision is to create an ethical culture. In the development of your analysis, be sure to include all concerns as indicated below:

Identify conflicts between the formal law enforcement code of ethics and the cop subculture, which is referred to as the thin blue line. What ethical concerns might these conflicts create? Apply relevant theories of ethics and integrity in policing from course readings and your own research.

Discuss the advantages offered by ethical pluralism over ethical absolutism and ethical relativism. Support your response with references from the literature.

Determine if most police officers receive enough training to help them achieve the higher standard of morale and ethics, which will help them to succeed at avoiding negative influences of questionable societal norms. Support your response with references from the related literature.

Provide recommendations to police administrators for necessary changes designed to ensure the ethical behavior of the officers and to create an ethical subculture. Support your suggestions with your personal experience, literature, and information gained from this course.

Explain how you, as a supervisor, can influence your subordinates to avoid potential negative influences from friends and associates. As part of your action plan, summarize how ethical behaviors will be measured within your department.

Length: 5-7 pages

Sunabh · Accepted Answer

Running Head: CRIMINAL JUSTICE							1
CRIMINAL JUSTICE		2
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Table of Contents
Introduction	3
Conflicts between the formal law enforcement code of ethics and the cop subculture	3
Ethical concerns associated with the conflicts	4
Recommendations to police administrators to ensure ethical culture	6
Conclusion	7
References	8
Introduction
Dealing with crime and criminals is how the police officers have to spend their time during their working hours. Therefore, this leads to a major transition in their mentality and police officer often faced the dilemma related to loyalty towards society or their fellow team members.
It would be essential to consider that due to establishment of police sub culture, there have been serious cases as well allegations on the police department, and police officers have been found to violate their responsibilities ethically. This paper will focus upon the ethical concerns associated with police-sub culture. Efforts will be made in order to present some recommendations that can help to eradicate this issue. 
Conflicts between the formal law enforcement code of ethics and the cop subculture
Police officers work and mostly live in a community where they have similar set of rules, functioning, dress code as well as rules and regulations to be followed. Therefore, this generates the sense of being in a community among them. Further, they may develop certain set of values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours due to which, they may visualize the members of society as potentially hostile and untrustworthy. This results into the development of mentality reflecting ‘us (police community) versus them (politicians, bureaucrats and other public)’. 
Tabrani (2019) reflected that, the formal law enforcement and the code of ethics usually consist of 3 major aspects, which the police officers have to follow in order to ensure safety to civilians. First is the equal protection, under which the police officers are required to enforce law irrespective of any discrimination based upon sex, religion, color or any other aspects.
Police officers are required to follow the law and rules by themselves even when they are on duty, and this comprises of the 2nd law enforcement ethic. Third code of ethics suggests that police officers are not allowed to use the power provided to them, in gaining any benefit. However, Ganapathy and Cheong (2016) mentioned that under the influence of prevailing police sub-culture some officers might develop their personal code of ethics. Under such condition or culture, loyalty to the fellow worker or fellow police officer is prioritized. 
This may result into some major issues, such as the development of cop-code or cop silence. Cop silence would drive by the development of a strong cop-subculture as a result of which, police officers may get indulged with hiding the evidences,

As a scholar in criminal justice, you have been assigned by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to conduct research to critically assess the reasons for the increase in unethical behavior and lack of...

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