Inmate abuse, corruption, violence, and inmate deaths have been reported throughout the last decade. Now, imagine you observe this incident as a training officer in a jail in the United States. An...

Memorandum on Ethical Duties of Prison Officials
Introduction
Prisons have been the highlight of ethical dilemmas from earlier times. As places that host individuals who violate the existing law and system, these places have often been plagued with inmate abuse, violence, and corruption and deaths. There has been a rise in concern regarding abuse, violence and death in prisons in the recent years. Many incidents have been reported of both neglect and violence that have led to extreme torture, pain and even death of inmates (Mauer, 2001). This memorandum focuses on two such incidents that could have been avoided with better care, vigilance and attention from prison authorities had timely action and ethical behaviour been undertaken.
This memorandum seeks to address two important areas of concern in prisons, namely ethical behaviour of prison authorities and treatment of inmates with mental illness. This will be done through stating two incidents that resulted in preventable death of inmates. While focussing on these issues, it will create an action plan for promoting ethical behaviour in prisons. It will also address the possible obstacles to the plan and solutions to them. Finally, the memo will discuss the critical issue of housing inmates with mental illness in regular prisons.
Issue highlight
One of the recent cases that shook the prison system was the death of a mentally ill inmate who was left to die in an overheated cell. The prison administration paid little attention to the mental history of the inmate. In addition, whether the inmate was housed in the overheated cell as a form of torture or neglect is unclear. However, ignoring the condition of the inmate was a big mistake that could have been clearly avoided.
The second incident involved the death of an inmate who swallowed undiluted detergent resulting in pain and bleeding from the mouth. The officer involved reported the incident to the captain who neglected the call, eventually leading to the inmate’s death. This incident highlights several issues, including lack of sanitary condition in prison, lack of experienced officers in prison, lack of proper monitoring of prisoners, neglect from captains and lack of provision of medical assistance to prisoners.
Theories of ethics
Ethics is basically the study of decision making regarding right and wrong. To be ethical, is to do the right thing morally based on personal judgement while being unethical involves neglecting or taking action that doesn’t feel morally right. In the workplace, ethics involves doing what is right according to the code or law of that particular place. It deals with morality in the professional sense. The two incidents mentioned above are in direct violation of several ethical theories and systems. Whether looked at from the perspective of deontological ethical systems that focus on the act as being good or bad or from the teleological ethical systems that focuses on consequences being good, both incidents caused pain and death which is bad in itself as well as a consequence.
Based on Ethical formalism too, universally, the act of...