The Ethics of Policing

This book offers the fullest, most rigorous and up-to-date treatment of police ethics currently available.

John Kleinig (Author)

9780521482066, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 February 1996

348 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2.7 cm, 0.595 kg

"Kleinig's new survey of the ethics of policing is an excellent introduction to the subject. it provides a very useful survey of a variety of topics--presenting careful analyses, considering (but not getting booged down in) recent contributions of other scholars, and offering sensible solutions. It does exactly what a book of this kind should do in a way that is neither oversimplified nor too complex for the lay reader." Ethics

This book is the most systematic, comprehensive and philosophically sophisticated discussion of police ethics yet published. It offers an in-depth analysis of the ethical values that police, as servants of the community, should uphold as they go about their task. The book considers the foundations and purpose of police authority in broad terms but also tackles specific problems such as accountability, the use of force, deceptive stratagems used to gain information or trap the criminally intentioned, corruption, and the tension between personal values and communal concerns. Offering the fullest, most rigorous and up-to-date treatment of police ethics currently available, this book will be a perfect textbook in courses on applied ethics in philosophy departments or police and criminal justice ethics in departments of criminology and law schools.

Part I. Professional Ethics: 1. Introduction
2. Moral foundations of policing
3. Professionalism, the police role and occupational ethics
Part II. Personal Ethics: 4. Institutional culture and individual character
5. Police discretion
6. The use of force
7. The use of deception
8. Entrapment
9. Gratuities and corruption
10. Public roles and private lives
Part III. Organizational Ethics: 11. Authority and accountability
12. Ethics and codes of ethics
13. Ethical challenges for police management.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]