Question

What if you were a correctional officer? Which of the five categories of ethical challenges do you think would prove most vexing to you?

Answer 1

The category of ethical challenges that would worry a correctional officer would be:

1. Brutality- Prisons are unsafe workplaces by their very nature. Guards must be wary of an environment in which assaults and murders may be commonplace events. Officers, obviously, have the upper hand in a correctional facility. They carry live ammunition and may be posted in a tower, far removed from the tumult of the yard. At the same time, the perpetual threat to their safety may tempt them to overcompensate when dealing with unruly inmates.

2. Corruption-  Prisoners often smuggle items prohibited on the inside, such as liquor and cell phones. Scoring drugs in prison is not much harder than obtaining them on the street. The black market of a prison cannot run effectively without the deliberate oversight if not actual cooperation of its guards. Leaders of prison gangs often bribe correctional workers to look the other way. Since this form of corruption often appears to be a victimless crime, that only make it all the more tempting to prison officials.

3. Insularity- Like police, correctional officers often heed a code of silence. A guard will not “rat” on another guard when he does something wrong. Fellow officers will ostracize anyone caught talking to a representative of a prison reform group. Given the dangers of the job, a sense of solidarity develops among corrections professionals

4. Equal Treatment- Like kids in a classroom, some prisoners will be more likable than others. Some will be funny. Some will be angry. Others may be violent. However, correctional workers must apply the rules to all inmates equally. Further, they should be no more helpful to harmful to one prisoner than another. Unequal treatment not only will breed resentment among guards and themselves but inconsistency weakens a prison’s ability to maintain order.

5. Off-Duty Life- Police officers are held to an extremely high standard that requires their personal lives to reflect the integrity of their position. They must maintain a professional image at all times because they are under constant public scrutiny and rely on the public's trust to maintain their power position. While most jobs end when the individual clocks out, policeman are faced with the ethical issues of maintaining their level of social respect and adherence to the law every moment

6. Upholding the Law and your Rights-  Each officer swears an oath to uphold the law and to defend an individual's constitutional rights. One of the ethical issues that an officer faces daily is the ability to uphold these oaths when they are seemingly contradictory. One of the biggest contradictions can be found in the nation's drug laws and subsequent drug wars, which force police officers to act in the best interest of the state rather than the individual. When someone is caught with a few illegal marijuana seeds, they could face imprisonment, fines, job loss, loss of social reputation and lose custody of their children.

7. Acting Impartially- One of the ethical issues officers are faced with is the requirement to act impartially. This idealistic type of oath causes a host of problems in real-world situations. It's not always possible to act impartially, especially for local and small-town officers that handle the same crowds of people throughout their career. A real-world example of this would be an officer that knows where the local drug houses are, but has no court-acceptable evidence to pursue the case

8. Necessary Force- All police officers have the authority to use necessary force to uphold the law, but in some cases their use of force is unjustified. This ethical issue cops face each day can, and does, put their lives in danger when dealing with those individuals that are non-compliant. In the majority of cases, an officer must make a split-second decision on what level of force is necessary and a misjudgment could result in injury or death for the officer.

9. Profiling- Profiling has been a major component of policing since early days. It is critical for officers to use their discretion and judgement in determine the best course of action on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately, modern-day society is rife with incorrect assumptions and stereotypes that result in unfair racial or ethical profiling cases every day. In the line of duty, a cop has seconds to asses a situation and does not have time to internally break down society's imposed belief systems that direct his conscious behavior.