Ethics in Criminal Justice Essay

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Prison Industrial Complex and the Private Prison System

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Legal paternalism is the idea that the state can coerce individuals into doing something for their own good, whether it is preventing them from engaging in self-harm by holding them in a mental health facility against their will, or obliging an entire nation of free-thinking adults to wear surgical masks so that everyone feels safe from a flu virus. As Feinberg (1971) notes, legal paternalism robs the individual of the ability to think for himself and can cause them to “lose the power of rational judgment and decision” (p. 105). By treating people like children, the state turns adults into children. This is a backwards approach to governance. Even children, as Feinberg (1971) points out, are not treated as children after a certain period because society expects them to grow up. Yet grown-ups are expected to give up their rights and be treated like children when the state decides it alone knows what is best for everyone. Legal paternalism may sound like a good idea to some in the case of preventing self-harm, but as the recent corona hysteria shows people do not know where to draw the line between prevention and obnoxious overstepping by the state. Legal paternalism should thus be considered an unethical approach in criminal justice.

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Legal moralism follows along with legal paternalism and is based on the idea that laws can be used to force people to adhere to whatever judgments the collective argues is moral. For example, if the collective decides that abortion is moral and that people have a moral right to it, no one is permitted to prevent an abortion from happening so long as the person is an adult. Yet people are expected to try to prevent murder from happening other cases—it is just that in this case, the collective has decided that infanticide is moral so no one can do anything about it and everyone must just look the other way as though it were not happening.

The problem with legal moralism is that it denies individuals the right to determine for themselves what is moral and immoral and it promotes collectivist thinking and action.

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In a free society, collectivism should be considered a dangerous step towards totalitarianism. Anyone familiar with the work Animal Farm can see plainly enough how the slippery slope works. Thus, one should be against legal moralism.

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Conflicts of interest arise for defense attorneys, attorneys and prosecutors when they put their own interests ahead of the party whose interests they are supposed to be serving. For instance, a defense attorney might have a conflict of interest in defending his…

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…houses all the inmates, who in turn work for pennies on the dollar for US corporations and effectively have become the new slaves. The prison industrial complex is like the new plantation system. People see this and activists like Angela Davis have cried foul about it for years. These are some of the reasons people distrust the justice system.

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Criticisms of private corrections stem from the fact that private prison complexes are in a for-profit market and make money from people being imprisoned. This should be seen as a clear conflict of interest since it suggests that there is a certain industry and certain players in that industry who personally benefit from more convictions. If laws were to be relaxed and alternative sentencing implemented, people in this industry would not be able to make as much profits. Private profiting should not even be a part of the legal system and the fact that it is gives people a good reason to be critical of the system. If corrections are going to be used, it should be at the expense of the taxpayer, and if taxpayers do not want their money going to corrections, they should elect officials who will pass legislation to change the way the system operates. The powerful lobbies of private corrections, however, have more voice apparently in the way that….....

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