Criminal Justice Ethics
Program Manager – Professor John Kleinig
This program focuses on ethical issues relating to the police, the courts, corrections and legal philosophy and aims to break major ground in a largely neglected research area. Although there is a thriving criminal justice research presence, relatively little of this is given over to an exploration of the distinctly ethical problems confronted by its institutions and practitioners. Through its grant proposals and other activities, the members of this group seek to provide the programmatic needs of criminal justice institutions / practitioners with a distinctly ethical framework. Some members have backgrounds in criminal justice practice; some are involved in the day-to-day ethical preparation of those who work in such institutions; all have a strong commitment to developing philosophically sophisticated ethical benchmarks for such institutions and raising the ethical consciousness of those who provide the community with criminal justice services.
Core Projects
- Police Corruption
- Loyalty, Whistleblowing and Witness Protection
Program Members
- Andrew Alexandra
- Dr Daniel Cohen
- Dr Steven Curry
- Associate Professor Jeanette Kennett
- Professor John Kleinig
- Professor Larry May
- Professor Seumas Miller
- Professor Gerhard Overland
- Professor John Tasioulas
- Professor Christopher Wellman
Recent Program Highlights
Core Project – Police Corruption
The second edition of Police Ethics, the widely used text written by Seumas Miller, John Blackler and Andrew Alexandra, was released by Allen & Unwin in Australia and Waterside Press in the UK. It contains updated materials on police corruption. In addition, Miller’s collection of primary sources in Police Ethics, part of an Ashgate series on Public and Professional Ethics, contains a section on police corruption.
The major new work in this area was associated with CAPPE’s four-year ARC Linkage grant with the Victoria Police. Focused on developing an integrity system for police, and now well into its second year, the project has used a topical taxonomy both to craft a series of position papers for discussion at several meetings in Melbourne and to develop a series of programmatic proposals. Seumas Miller, John Kleinig, Steve Curry, Andrew Alexandra, Daniel Cohen and Sue Burdett are involved in that project.
Core Project –Loyalty, Whistleblowing and Witness Protection
John Kleinig has been writing the entry on “Loyalty” for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, but has also been incorporating materials on loyalty in his now-completed manuscript on Ethics in Criminal Justice: An Introduction, to be published by Cambridge University Press. A chapter on “Patriotic Loyalty” was written for Patriotism: Philosophical and Political Perspectives, a collection of original essays commissioned by Aleksandar Pavkovic and Igor Primoratz.
Other program highlights have included a reprinting and the release of a paperback version of Jury Ethics: Juror Conduct and Jury Dynamics, edited by Kleinig and James P. Levine (Paradigm) and the publication of Ethical Challenges of Intervening in Drug Use: Policy, Research, and Treatment (OICJ Press), edited by Kleinig and Stanley Einstein, a 770-page volume containing contributions from ten CAPPE authors. Kleinig has also written the entries on “Ethical Policing” and “Entrapment” for the forthcoming Sage Dictionary of Policing, ed. Alison Wakefield and Richard Wild. Drafts of an invited chapter, “Liberty and Security in an Age of Terrorism” for Security and Justice in the Homeland: Criminologists on Terrorism, ed. Brian Forst, Jack Greene & James Lynch, were presented to several audiences, and work begun on “Recovery as an Ethical Ideal”, an invited essay for a special issue of Substance use and Misuse. Kleinig also wrote an essay on “Torture and Political Morality” for a new collection on Political Morality edited by Primoratz, and Miller’s entry on “Torture” for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has now appeared. On the issue of responsibility, Miller has published “Collective Responsibility: An Individualist Account,” and Daniel Cohen has made several presentations, including “Resentment and Cognitive Dissonance”, “Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience: Their Implications for Responsibility”, and “Addiction is No Excuse”, He is currently working with Morgan Luck on intention and its implications for moral responsibility.
Criminal Justice Ethics, a journal collaboratively published by CAPPE and the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics in New York, continues to appear on a regular basis. Discussions are currently under way with Routledge, who have expressed a desire to include it in their criminal justice list.