Ends and Means in Policing

John Kleinig

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367025281
• eBook ISBN: 9780429677984
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Policing is a highly pragmatic occupation. It is designed to achieve the important social ends of peacekeeping and public safety, and is empowered to do so using means that are ordinarily seen as problematic; that is, the use of force, deception, and invasions of privacy, along with considerable discretion. It is often suggested that the ends of policing justify the use of otherwise problematic means, but do they?

This book explores this question from a philosophical perspective. The relationship between ends and means has a long and contested history both in moral/practical reasoning and public policy. Looking at this history through the lens of policing, criminal justice philosopher John Kleinig explores the dialectic of ends and means (whether the ends justify the means, or whether the ends never justify the means) and offers a new, sharpened perspective on police ethics.

After tracing the various ways in which ends and means may be construed, the book surveys a series of increasingly concrete issues, focusing especially on those that arise in policing contexts. The competing moral demands made by ends and means culminate in considerations of noble cause corruption, dirty hands theory, lesser degradations (such as tear gas, tasers, chokeholds, and so on), and finally, those means deemed impermissible by the majority in Western culture, such as torture.

Chapter 1
Ends

Every sort of expert knowledge and every inquiry, and similarly every action and undertaking, seems to seek some good. Because of that, people are right to affirm that “the good is that which all things seek.” But there appears to be a certain difference among ends: some are activities, while others are products of some kind over and above the activities themselves. Where there are ends over and above the activities, in these cases the products are by nature better than the activities.¹

We deliberate not about ends but about means. For a doctor does not deliberate whether he shall heal, nor an orator whether he shall persuade, nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and order, nor does anyone else deliberate about his end. They assume the end and consider how and by what means it is to be attained; and if it seems to be produced by several means they consider by which it is most easily and best produced, while if it is achieved by one only they consider how it will be achieved by this and by what means this will be achieved, till they come to the first cause, which in the order of discovery is last.²

As evidenced by these quotations from Aristotle, there is a long history to the consideration of ends. Aristotle figures in much of that history. He views ends as the true objects of action, and suggests that, despite their multiplicity, the ends of acts are ultimately characterizable as “the good” at which we aim. Ends may be activities or some product of activity. Where they are the latter, they take precedence over the former. Somewhat surprisingly, in the second quotation he suggests that ends are not themselves objects of deliberation—only means are, and we deliberate about them in order to judge their efficiency and acceptability.

Our discussion of ends will not be an exercise in Aristotelian scholarship, though it is useful to see the variety of issues that Aristotle raises, while making only a brief reference to the means that are employed to achieve them. I do not mean to underplay the importance of means and of considering ends and means together, but intend rather to emphasize that ends raise issues in their own right and not only because of their place in the means-ends relation.

Although, as the quotations indicate, the idea of an end is central to Aristotle’s account of practical reasoning, it also plays an important role in his larger scheme of things. That larger scheme is often referred to as teleological: the view that natural/living as well as artifactual objects possess ends (téle)—something toward which they tend—as part of the kinds of things that they are. According to this view, almond trees will tend toward producing flowers and nuts; zebras will tend toward maturity and reproductive activity; and a grub’s end will be turning into a butterfly that lays eggs. For Aristotle, the realization of these things’ ends constitutes the flourishing of those things. In the case of man-made artifacts such as musical instruments or knives, they will have as their ends the purpose for which they were made (music or cutting), and good instances of each will be those that, respectively, produce good sounds or cut well. For Aristotle, humans also have ends; humans have, moreover, an ultimate end—what Aristotle calls eudaimonia (sometimes translated as “happiness,” but better thought of as “living well”).³

Although supporters of (some version of) Aristotelian teleology can still be found, teleology as a general theory of things does not have a great deal of contemporary support. Even if it makes sense to speak of natural objects—such as trees—as “flourishing,” this need not be understood in terms of fulfilling their natural ends (téle). The language of ends is more appropriately understood as one that we use in relation either to human action of some kind or to the intentional products of human action, such as musical instruments or knives.⁴ The reason for this is that, typically, human action is purposive, whether we act individually, collectively, or through various institutions or other social artifacts and structures. It is not that Aristotle had a somewhat animistic view of living natural objects, attributing to them purposes or intentions, but that what he saw as ends (embodied in flourishing) might now be accounted for in other ways (e.g., as the result of evolutionary processes). In any case, the attribution of ends to natural objects such as trees, though grounded in their actual features, is something that we—as humans—attribute to them as one of the ways in which we make sense of the world to ourselves.

The language of “ends” is not the only one we might use, and sometimes its use may even sound a bit archaic or stilted. Sometimes we may prefer to talk instead of aims, goals, ambitions, purposes, intentions, aspirations, desired results, targets, motivating ideas, or objectives.⁵ Sometimes, but not always. No doubt, there are nuances to the language of ends that are not present when we adopt the terminology of, say, aims or goals. Certainly, when the talk is of justifying means by reference to the ends they are designed to realize, or when we talk of the distinction between intermediate and final ends, the vocabulary of ends seems most apt—and not only most apt, but also as having a normative dimension. We see ends, and certainly final, terminal, or ultimate ends as “ends in themselves” or as things sought for their own sake, or that are valued or valuable, and the means as (in part or whole) warranted by the fact that they are employed to bring about such ends. Whether there are such normative ends and, if so, what their nature might be, has been a matter of longstanding controversy.⁶

Although ends tend to figure centrally in discussions of practical reasoning, it is probably misleading to think of such means-end relations as exhausting the domain of practical reasoning.⁷ Other models of practical reason have employed specification (Henry Richardson) or incorporated organic or part-whole thinking. Thus, I may eat nutritious foods in order to stay healthy, and staying healthy is, for me, an element in my flourishing. But health is not a means to flourishing, so much as a part of it. The same has often been argued with respect to the relation between virtue and eudaimonia (living well). Is the former a means to the latter or, as has often been argued, a constituent of the latter? But the present project is not intended to exhaust the domain of practical reason, but only to consider that dimension in which ends are linked to means, and usually for justificatory purposes.

For Aristotle, the end of action is sought as a good for its own sake—either the good associated with a particular sphere of human activity, say—to use Aristotle’s examples—health as the good aimed at by medicine, or wealth as the good aimed at by household management. Or the end of action is sought as some overall good for Man (eudaimonia). (Aristotle has a hard time imagining that human activities, along with human organs, could “aim” at various goods without Man himself having some good toward which his activities are directed. It is, however, hardly a matter of logic that this should be the case, and we will later have some reason to qualify it.)

Clearly, our having an end is more than our simply having something that we want, wish, or desire—it must be something that that we seek to achieve as the result of our action. No doubt, because of certain wants, wishes, or desires, we may come to decide on certain actions that will realize the wants, wishes or desires that we have—either as short- or long-term goals. But that does not reduce such ends to mere wants, etc. The objects of desire do not have to be attainable (though some might argue that they must be believed to be). Even this, however, is arguably too strong: may I have world peace as my end without believing it to be realizable (by me or at all)? There may also be less to an end than something we want, wish, or desire. Sometimes we may be said to have ends without wanting them. If it is said that the end of human life is to glorify God, that may not be something I have any wish to do: it may not be my end, even if it is claimed to be an end of human life. Or, if I am a police officer, it may be said that the end of police work is public safety, even if, for some, the end of their police work may be not much more than having a secure job with good benefits. The good of a profession may be one thing, though the good sought by some of its members might be otherwise. In certain contexts, these complications may be important (though for the most part I shall ignore them).

Even if it can be argued that there are ends toward which we or other living organisms are directed or “tend,” it might be questioned whether they are predetermined and unchanging. Might such ends be fluid and contingent on shifting circumstances rather than somehow fixed in nature? The philosopher John Dewey expended a good deal of ink in relativizing both means and ends to circumstances.⁸ And perhaps they may be relativized to subjects, as well. What Alfred treats as a means may be an end for Bruce, or what at one time Bruce treats as an end he may at another time come to see as only a means. Say, Alfred sees political power as a means to social reform whereas Bruce values power for its own sake. Or imagine that Bruce enters on a law career hoping to make lots of money and retire at 40, but discovers by the time he has reached 40 that he now finds fulfillment in legal pursuits—and so his legal career has now become an end in itself.⁹ What initially attracts a person to law enforcement may be its adventurous possibilities, along with generous employment benefits. After a while, however, the job becomes part of her life and identity, and she continues in it for its own sake. This suggests that there may not be a fixed order of means and ends.

What the previous suggests is that we may conceive of final or ultimate ends either as relative to particular circumstances or as something inherent in the nature of things. It is Dewey’s contention that the latter view has led to utopianism, fanaticism, and totalitarianism.¹⁰ For Dewey, people’s ends arise for them when their engagement with their environment leads them to experience some lack or deficiency; their ends are constituted by states of affairs whose realization therefore has some claim on them.¹¹ Those states of affairs lead agents to reflect on what means, from where they are, will lead to their realization—what Dewey refers to as “ends-in-view” (since the means may not actually accomplish them). These, for Dewey, are agents’ final or ultimate ends, or at least they are insofar as they achieve some overall coordination of such agents’ activities. They are not final, however, in the sense that they bring the agents’ activities to some sort of conclusion:

Ends [in view] are foreseen consequences which arise in the course of activity and which are employed to give activity added meaning and to direct its further course. They are in no sense ends of action. In being ends of deliberation they are redirecting pivots in action.¹²

As Dewey understands it, ends are not “out there,” fixed and independent of the experience and activity of the agent. Ends are developed in the course of agential activity in the world, and they may evolve over time.¹³ He does not altogether reject the idea that some generalized ends might constitute a framework for thinking about ends-in-view, but even those are subject to review by the agent.

Humans undoubtedly have ends when they act purposively. These ends give shape, and ultimately meaning, to what they do. The ends a person has may be immediate or remote, intermediate or final, instrumental or terminal, first or ultimate—to use some of the contrasts that are often drawn between the different ends that we may have. Aristotle himself speaks of a hierarchy of ends in which some ends (intermediate) are pursued to accomplish other ends, and others (final) are pursued for their own sakes. Final ends may themselves be differentiated, on the one hand, into those that, though pursued for their own sakes, also serve as means to further ends, and, on the other hand, ends that can be said to be “most final” (or ultimate), in that they serve no purpose beyond their being realized. I may, for example, get tennis lessons to improve my tennis game, though my playing tennis is enjoyable and so figures for me as an end in itself. Of course, though tennis may be an end in itself I may pursue it as well because it increases my fitness, and my fitness may be an element in my pursuit of a good life (eudaimonia).

Part of the significance often attributed to the intermediate/final end distinction is the supposition that final ends are the only kinds of ends that can constitute goods of sufficient importance to sustain the claim that the end justifies the means.¹⁴ The view is that intermediate ends, even if they are pursued as ends in themselves, may not be linked to values of sufficient considerability to justify the means that are intended to secure them.¹⁵ Moreover, not every intermediate end is pursued as an end in itself. Some ends may be merely instrumental. The means employed to open a box may be a screwdriver to loosen the cover or a hammer to break it open. Unless opening the box is represented in a particular way (say, by linking it to goods or by asserting that it is in itself good), the question of whether, in cases such as this, the end justifies the means will not normally arise. For in these cases, our ends are simply as the (intended) outcomes or consequences of action. What we aim to bring about may represent what we desire to do, but what we desire to do may not be viewed, even by us, as something worthwhile.

In coming to grips with some of the issues raised so far, it is useful to consider some of the points made by Harry Frankfurt in an influential paper, “On the Usefulness of Final Ends.”

Frankfurt prefers to use the language of “instrumental” and “terminal” ends to make Aristotle’s distinction between actions that are justifiable as means to some end and those that are deemed either worth pursuing for their own sake or valuable in themselves. The Aristotelian way of making the distinction bothers Frankfurt (we will have more to say about this later) because it imagines a world in which the value of means is exclusively a function of the ends that these means serve. For Frankfurt, a particular means may have a value that is quite independent of the ends it serves: if using the third degree on someone results in getting a confession, that confession, whatever we may think of its reliability, is not what gives the use of the third degree the value that it has. Use of the third degree is morally problematic, whatever end it serves.

A further worry that Frankfurt has with Aristotle’s account is that whereas Aristotle think...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Ends
• 2 The Ends of Policing
• 3 Means
• 4 Means in Policing
• 5 The Question of Justification
• 6 The Doctrine of Double Effect
• 7 Persons as Ends
• 8 Impermissible Means
• 9 Other Problematic Means
• 10 Dirty Hands and Noble Cause Corruption
• Concluding Note
• Index