Ethics for the Public Service Professional

Aric W. Dutelle, Randy S. Taylor

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351979719
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Forensic Science
• Index: Law

Headlines of public service corruption scandals are painful reminders of the need for continuing education in the subjects of ethics and integrity. Public service professionals employed as government officials, forensic scientists, investigators, first responders, and those within the legal and justice systems, face daily decisions that can mean the difference between life or death and freedom or imprisonment. Sometimes, such decisions can present ethical dilemmas even to the most seasoned of professionals.

Building on the success of the first edition, Ethics for the Public Service Professional, Second Edition serves as a single-source resource for the topic of ethics and ethical decision making as it relates to government service. While incorporating an examination of the history of ethics, codes and legislation, the book exposes the reader to the challenges faced by today's public service professionals and administrators in incorporating ethics within daily decisions, procedures, and duties.

Key features include:

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• Current controversies in police, forensic, and other public service sectors including: racial profiling, evidence tampering, disaster response, and audits

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• Important new mechanisms of accountability, including use-of-force reporting, citizen complaint procedures, and open government

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• Contemporary news stories throughout the book introduce the reader to a broad range of ethical issues facing leaders within the public service workplace

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• Chapter pedagogy including key terms, learning objectives, end-of-chapter questions, a variety of boxed ethical case examples, and references

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• Ripped from the Headlines current event examples demonstrate actual scenarios involving the issues discussed within each chapter

This in-depth text will be essential for the foundational development and explanation of protocols used within a successful organization. As such, Ethics for the Public Service Professional, Second Edition will help introduce ethics and ethical decision-making to both those new to the realm of forensic science, criminal justice, and emergency services and those already working in the field.

1EthicsA Look at the Basics

Always do right—this will gratify some and astonish the rest.

Mark Twain

Key Terms

• Descriptive ethics
• Ethics
• Meta-ethics
• Morals
• Normative ethics values

Learning Objectives

1. Define ethics.
2. Define and distinguish between morals, values, and ethics.
3. Define and differentiate among the three types of ethical subdivisions.
4. Differentiate between personal and political ethics.
5. Understand how ethics and morals are separate from law.

What Are “Ethics”?

History credits Theodore Roosevelt with saying that “to educate a man in mind, but not in morals is to create a menace to society.” It is for precisely this reason that the topic of ethics is discussed within this text as a vital component of public service. Public servants must not only do technical things correctly and professional things in a professional manner, but they also must do ethically correct things. Everyone encounters ethical dilemmas in his or her personal and professional lives; the question is whether they are ready for them when they do. There has historically been a lack of training and education associated with ethics and with ethical decision making, which often sets the individual up for failure, or at the very least uncertainty, when confronted with an ethical dilemma. But what does it mean to have an ethical dilemma, and what are ethics? Perhaps exploring the origin of the word, and its historical usage, will assist in providing the answers necessary to evaluate ones choices and responses pertaining to a challenging event.

The term ethics means the study of moral standards and how they affect conduct. The Greek root for ethics is ethos, which emphasizes the perfection of the individual and the community in which he or she is defined (Foster, 2003).

There is great debate as to whether or not ethics should, or even can, be taught to adults. The two most common juxtaposition sides pertaining to this debate are that by the time one has reached adulthood, understanding of values and ethics is fixed, while others believe that lifelong education can influence and modify behavior, and thus ethics should be taught. Chapter 13 discusses the topic of ethical training and education. For now, let us concentrate on defining what ethics is and is not.

Revisiting the Basics

Nearly all educated people acknowledge the importance of ethics. However, relatively few understand ethics as well as they think that they do, or as well as they should. Ethics can best be meaningfully discussed and applied only when it is fully understood. This understanding requires that one revisit the philosophical and moral basics associated with that which encompasses the study of ethics. So, what then is ethics about?

Right and Wrong: “We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience” (Mill, 1861).

Virtue and Vice: “Vice, the opposite of virtue, shows us more clearly what virtue is. Justice becomes more obvious when we have injustice to compare it to” (Quintilian, 2006).

Benefit and Harm: “The two essential ingredients in the sentiment of justice are the desire to punish a person who has done harm, and the knowledge or belief that there is some definite individual or individuals to whom harm has been done” (Mill, 1869).

Universal Rules of Conduct: “Ethics encompasses fixed, universal rules of right conduct that are contingent on neither time nor culture nor circumstance” (Foster, 2003).

Character: Ethics is entwined within ones character, “the traits, qualities, and established reputation that define who one is and what one stands for in the eyes of others” (Foster, 2003).

Providing an Example: Ethics is founded upon “an established pattern of conduct worthy of emulation” (Foster, 2003).

Morals, Values, and Ethics

If one were to analyze the often-used interchangeable words of morals and ethics, he or she might encounter a great deal of confusion, as it often appears that many do not know that they are in fact entirely separate matters. While the delineation between the two is perhaps not as elementary as will be made within the text, it is not nearly as complex nor commingled as is found in common media and human interaction. While overly simplified, perhaps it is most easily summarized by Charles Colson (2000), “Morality describes what is. Ethics describes what ought to be.”

The word morality originates from the Latin word moralis, which means “traditional customs or proper behavior.” Therefore, fundamentally, morals refer to a set of rules defining what is considered to be right or wrong. These rules are defined by (although not typically written down or “defined” by writing) and accepted by a group or society. The group or society can include peers, educators, religion, media, and the family unit. If someone within the group or society breaks one of the rules, then they are typically considered to have been “bad” or “immoral.”

Values, on the other hand, provide direction in the determination of right versus wrong or good versus bad. Values are what an individual believes to have worth and importance, or to be valuable. As such, morals are values that an individual attributes to a system of beliefs that assist the individual in defining right from wrong or good from bad.

Ethics, which has as its core the Greek word ethos (Merriam-Webster.com), refers to the “moral character of an individual.” The Greeks believed that ethos included an emphasis on an individual’s character as well as including the citizen as a component of a greater community. At the core, this seems an easy beginning; that ethics begins with the individual (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1Greek cardinal virtues. (Courtesy of Ellie Blazer. Adapted from Dreisbach, C. 2009. Ethics in criminal justice, New York: McGraw-Hill.)

Ethical Subdivisions

• Normative ethics: How moral values should be determined. (What do individuals think is right?)
• Descriptive ethics: What morals are actually followed or adhered to. (How should individuals act?)
• Meta-ethics: The fundamental nature of ethics, including whether it has an objective justification, how individuals determine for themselves what societal norms to follow. (What does it mean to be “right”?)

Ethics involves attempting to address questions as to how a moral outcome can be achieved. This is sometimes referred to as “applied ethics.” For our purposes, we will divide the study of ethics into three areas: normative, descriptive, and meta-ethics.

Ethical Subdivisions

Normative Ethics

The field of normative ethics is concerned with investigating the questions that arise when one asks, “How should one act, ethically speaking?” It seeks to examine the standards for the rightness or wrongness of...