Question

What are some potential ethical concerns for crime and justice studies?

Please cite your source if you used one. Thank you!

Answer 1

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary. Also, I have mentioned the “Stanford Prison Experiment,” the information of which is easily available online with similar facts and reports. So you can cite any of those sources.

(Answer) One of the biggest issues in studying crime and justice is the use of human subjects. There might be times when psychological profiles of criminals are studied. Also, there might be studies that entail studying a person’s environment and the kind of elements that cause them to become criminals.

Such experimentation tends to have a severe effect on the individual’s cognition. Also, these studies might give the result a priority and not really the well-being of the subject. In order to conduct such researches, there usually needs to be several stages of approvals from board members who might offer a grant. This is where the experiment is discussed in detail and the ethical implications are outlined. However, there might be times when details are overlooked and the subjects are viewed as expendable individuals.

Let us analyse this issue with the consideration of the “Stanford Prison Experiment.” Firstly, let it be pointed out that this experiment conducted by Dr. Zimbardo was entirely unethical. Not only were the “prisoners” ill-treated and the “guards” manipulated but, also Dr. Zimbardo was too absorbed into role-playing to focus on the study and the ethics of it all. Such experiments should be banned even if mice were to be the subjects and not just humans.

Secondly, the purpose of the “Stanford prison experiment” was to observe and analyse how quickly a human would conform to a particular social role, especially if it were heavily stereotyped. For instance, the students assigned to the role of the “guards”, quickly became aggressive and abused the prisoners, because of the stereotype around prison-guards. Also, prisoners quickly conformed to their individual roles like those of the “informant”, the “disturbed”, the “isolated” etc.

Such a hypothesis would not easily be determined through a survey and would require a certain level of vicariousness. That is why an experiment was conducted and not a survey. This part is understandable. However, there are certain ethical codes like full-disclosure agreements, treatment of the subjects, permits, damaging one’s psychological state etc. that should have been considered. It would be unclear how a person would react to this situation today.