How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife
POLICE ETHICS AND INTEGRITY
Milan Pagon
Professor and Dean College of Police and Security Studies University of Maribor, Slovenia ABSTRACT The paper deals with the importance of police ethics and integrity in contemporary policing. It first describes the field of applied ethics in general. It explains the basis for the structure of professional moral obligations, briefly depicts the core imperatives of applied ethics and describes the process of moral reasoning. It then defines police ethics, discusses the reasons for its relative underdevelopment, and delineates its future development in three interrelated directions: (a) applying the principles of applied ethics to police profession; (b) establishing standards of ethical conduct in policing; and (c) defining the means and content of education and training in police ethics. Next, it discusses the organisational environment that is conductive to police ethics and elaborates on the concept of integrity. The paper concludes that police ethics and integrity are of critical importance in the professionalisation of policing and the best antidotes to police corruption, brutality, neglect of human rights, and other forms of police deviance. Date: September 2003 Attribution: No prior publication Language of origin: English Filename: pg011mpa.pdf
INTRODUCTION For all of us in the field of police and security studies, it has become obvious that we are witnessing a paradigm shift. While we cannot expect this shift to result in a uniform approach to policing everywhere in the world, we can assume that all the various approaches will be based on the same set of assumptions of modern policing, namely the community involvement, a proactive approach that emphasizes prevention, professionalism, innovation, and problem-solving, and an integrated view of criminal justice (Pagon, 1998). In this process, policing is getting closer to professionalisation , a change long advocated by police scholars. As several authors (e.g., Hahn,
Milan Pagon
Professor and Dean College of Police and Security Studies University of Maribor, Slovenia ABSTRACT The paper deals with the importance of police ethics and integrity in contemporary policing. It first describes the field of applied ethics in general. It explains the basis for the structure of professional moral obligations, briefly depicts the core imperatives of applied ethics and describes the process of moral reasoning. It then defines police ethics, discusses the reasons for its relative underdevelopment, and delineates its future development in three interrelated directions: (a) applying the principles of applied ethics to police profession; (b) establishing standards of ethical conduct in policing; and (c) defining the means and content of education and training in police ethics. Next, it discusses the organisational environment that is conductive to police ethics and elaborates on the concept of integrity. The paper concludes that police ethics and integrity are of critical importance in the professionalisation of policing and the best antidotes to police corruption, brutality, neglect of human rights, and other forms of police deviance. Date: September 2003 Attribution: No prior publication Language of origin: English Filename: pg011mpa.pdf
INTRODUCTION For all of us in the field of police and security studies, it has become obvious that we are witnessing a paradigm shift. While we cannot expect this shift to result in a uniform approach to policing everywhere in the world, we can assume that all the various approaches will be based on the same set of assumptions of modern policing, namely the community involvement, a proactive approach that emphasizes prevention, professionalism, innovation, and problem-solving, and an integrated view of criminal justice (Pagon, 1998). In this process, policing is getting closer to professionalisation , a change long advocated by police scholars. As several authors (e.g., Hahn,