1. Arrington, Robert. 1983. “A Defense of Ethical Relativism.”  Metaphilosophy 14: 225 – 239.

Summary:  The ethical relativist denies there exist moral principles that are true or binding for all persons.  A social relativist insists that if a particular society does not maintain a certain principle in its code of morality then that principle is not true for this society and does not bind its members.  Ethical relativists adopt their ethical position based on cultural relativism.  This is the view that different cultures or societies possess different moral codes and there are no moral principles in existence to which all cultures subscribe.  Critics of cultural relativism often cite the example of Nazi Germany to show that cultural relativism is not tenable.  They argue that Nazi society must be condemned but that a cultural relativist would be forced to defend it on the basis that there are no absolute moral values.  The effect of this is that the cultural relativist is put in the position of defending practices like the Holocaust.  But the author argues, we need to distinguish between blaming a society for certain practices and denouncing such practices. Thus, even if we do not blame a society for practices because it does not share our moral values, that does not prevent us from denouncing and condemning those practices. 

2. Folkenes, George. 1987. “Ethics in the Graduate Criminal Justice Curriculum.”   Teaching Philosophy 10 (1): 23-26

Summary:  There is a growing awareness that teaching ethics to criminal justice students is imperative because decisions in the criminal justice sector are not made in a moral vacuum.  The author believes that ethics should be communicated and taught to criminal justice students firstly be teaching basic ethical principles and that concrete examples of ethical dilemmas in everyday experience are useful tools in teaching the subject.   The author stresses that the need for knowledge about ethics arises especially because of the professional nature of the work undertaken by those who are employed in the criminal justice system.  Undertaking a profession normally implies a set of ethical requirements.  As well, training in ethics assists in developing analytical skills and the ability to reason properly.  The author sets out other advantages associated with knowledge of ethics in criminal justice.    

1. Westmarland, Louise. 2005. “Police Ethics and Integrity: Breaking the Blue Code of Silence.”  Policing and Society 15(2): 145-165. 

Summary:  A survey originally designed to survey North American police officers was carried out among U.K police asking about police attitudes towards corruption, unethical conduct and minor violations of law enforcement rules.  Most officers who participated in the study regarded certain types of conduct, including taking goods or money, as much worse that illegal brutality or bending rules to protect fellow officers.  Police surveyed were unwilling to report unethical conduct by their colleagues unless a taking or stealing of goods or property was involved.  The findings therefore support the existence of a so called ‘blue code of silence’/noble cause corruption and ‘Dirty Harry’ beliefs concerning police rule bending.

2 . Parent, Rick. 2006. “The Police Use of Deadly Force: International Comparisons.”   The Police Journal 79: 230-237.

Summary:  A comparison of police use of deadly force in Canada and the United States reveals that trends in crime on the two countries are similar but that the perceived threat and calculated risk for police in the U.S is substantially greater then for police in Canada.  For example, on average 200 persons are shot and killed by U.S. law enforcement annually as compared to about 10 persons a year in Canada and in the U.S. about 70 police are murdered each year as compared to about 2 persons a year in Canada.  This may assist in explaining why police in the U.S. employ deadly force with greater frequency than most other western nations. 

3 . Ruiz, Jim and Christine Bono. 2004. “At What Price a “Freebie”? The Real Cost of Police Gratuities.”  Criminal Justice Ethics Winter/Spring: 44-53. 

Summary:  The authors argue that police acceptance of gratuities is a harmful and degrading practice that should be actively discouraged.  Most formal police codes of conduct exclude the acceptance of gratuities although some police departments regard gratuities as a matter of personal integrity and not corruption.  The authors contend that police acceptance of gratuities serves as a gateway to greater levels of police corruption and that the annual take from gratuities could be as high as $8000-10,000 a year amounting, in the case of some police departments to as much as 30% or more of annual income for a police officer.

1. Beckett, Katherine, Nyrop and Pfingst. 2006. “Race, Drugs and Policing: Understanding Disparities in Drug Delivery Arrests.”  Criminology 44(1): 105-131. 

Summary:  Data concerning racial disparities in drug delivery arrests in Seattle was studied to compare the racial and ethnic composition of those delivering drugs to the composition of those arrested for this offence.  The findings of the study revealed that blacks are significantly overrepresented among drug delivery arrestees in Seattle.  The disparity can be explained by several factors including, the focus of law enforcement on crack offenders, the priority given to outdoor drug venues and the concentration of policing resources in racially heterogeneous areas.  The evidence also indicates that these practices were not governed by factors that were race neutral like crime rates or community complaints.  The conclusion is that race shapes perceptions of who and what constitutes the drug problem in Seattle and the organizational/policing response to that issue. 

2. Harlow, Caroline. 2005,  November. “Hate Crime Reported by Victims and Police.”  U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. 

Summary:  An ordinary crime becomes a hate crime when offenders chose a victim because of a particular characteristic, for example, race, religion, ethnicity or gender and reveal that hate prompted them to commit the crime.  Most hate crimes accompany violent crimes such as rape or sexual assault, or robbery or assault and in one third of incidents hate crime victims reported a violent crime. Victims have reported an average of 191,000 hate crime incidents annually since 2000 and victims regard race as the primary reason for hate crimes.

3. Brown, Robert and Frank, James. 2006. “Race and Officer Decision Making: Examining Differences in Arrest Outcomes between Black and White Officers.”  Justice Quarterly 23(1): 96-126. 

Summary:  Applying data from observations of police and citizen encounters in Cincinnati, Ohio researchers examined the influence of the race of a police officer on arrest outcomes.  The findings suggest that officer race has a direct influence on arrest outcomes and that there exist real differences between white and black officers in relation to the decision to make an arrest.  In general white officers were found to be more likely to arrest suspects then black officers but black suspects were more likely to be arrested when the decision maker was a black officer.

1. Hansen, Mark. 2005, November. “Hand It Over.”  ABA Journal 91(12): 30-32. 

Summary:  Sometimes there can be a conflict in ethical duties when a lawyer receives evidence from a client in a criminal case.  A lawyer who finds herself in that situation must find a way of resolving the conflict between two fundamental duties.  On the one hand the lawyer is required to preserve lawyer and client confidentiality but on the other hand the lawyer may not unlawfully obstruct another party’s access to evidence or unlawfully, alter, conceal or destroy a document that has evidentiary value. 

1.  Day, Andrew, Tucker, Kylie, and Howells, Kevin. 2004.  “Coerced Offender Rehabilitation: a Defensible Practice?” Psychology, Crime and Law 10(3): 259-269. 

Summary:  The use of the criminal justice system to force offenders to receive psychological treatment, for example, in the case of sex offenders, is a very controversial practice.  The authors suggest that coercing offenders to participate in rehabilitation programs is unlikely in itself to lead to poor outcomes and that the perception of the offenders concerning the fact of coercion will influence the offender more in terms of how he or she reacts to treatment.  Even when offenders regard themselves as being coerced to accept treatment, it is likely that pre-treatment attitudes can change over the course of a program and therapeutic gains can be realized. 

1. Steen, Sara and Bandy Rachel. 2007 “When the Policy Becomes the Problem: Criminal Justice in the New Millennium.” Punishment and Society 9(1): 5-26. 

Summary:  After some 30 years of increasing expenditure by the States on correctional facilities questions are now being raised about the increasing cost of punishment.  During the past 5 years many State governments have seen punishment expenses grossly outpace revenues and have realized that the ‘get tough’ policies of the 1980s and 1990s are no longer economically sustainable.  The incarceration rate in the U.S. has doubled each decade, increasing from 135 persons per 100,000 citizens in 1978 to 482 per 100,000 in 2003.  This means that 1 in every 140 persons in the U.S. is being confined in a state or federal prison or jail.  State correction expenditures were the second fastest growing component of state budgets during the 1990s.  Is incarceration any longer a fiscally appropriate response to crime? 

2. Hensley, Christopher, Mary Koscheski and Richard Tewksbury. 2003 “The Impact of Institutional Factors on Officially Reported Sexual Assaults in Prisons.” Sexuality and Culture 7(4): 16-26. 

Summary:  Research on sexual assaults in prison has been sparse.  The authors study examines the influence of institutional factors on officially reported sexual assaults in prisons and concludes that wardens supervising institutions with higher numbers of inmates were more likely to report that inmates had been sexually assaulted.  Those who ran minimum security prisons were less likely to report such assaults. The existence of a conjugal visitation programme resulted in a likelihood of more reports of inmate sexual assaults. 

1. Soss, Joe, Laura Langbein and Alan R. Metelkol. 2003 “Why do White Americans Support the Death Penalty?” The Journal of Politics 65(2): 39-421. 

Summary:  Why do white Americans support the death penalty?  The authors suggest that white support hinges on a wide range of attitudes including social and governmental trust and individualist and authoritarian values.  White responses to capital punishment vary according to the local context but racial prejudice emerges as the largest influencing factor and a comparatively strong predictor of white support for the death penalty.  Black residential proximity functions to polarize opinion among whites along lines of racial attitude.  As the black percentage of county residents increases so too does the impact of racial prejudice on white support for capital punishment.

2.  Hensley, Christopher, Mary Koscheski and Richard Tewksbury. 2003 “The Impact of Institutional Factors on Officially Reported Sexual Assaults in Prisons.” Sexuality and Culture 7(4): 16-26. 

Summary:  The federal drug control budget has exploded over the past twenty years with expenditures increasing more than 600% in real terms from 1981 to 2000.  Most of this cost was devoted to domestic criminal justice programs.  The authors’ survey residents of the five largest U.S. metropolitan areas to understand factors of public support for spending on three major components of U.S. drug control policy: law enforcement, rehabilitation services and school based prevention programs. 

3. Tonry, Michael. 2006 “Criminology, Mandatory Minimums, and Public Policy.” Criminology and Public Policy 5(1): 45-56. 

Summary:  The author argues that mandatory minimum prison sentences are a classic instance of criminology and public policy marching in different directions.  Criminal justice practitioners have always been aware that prescribing punishments that are too severe leads juries, prosecutors and judges to find ways to avoid imposing them.  Why therefore do policy makers continue to enact laws that are going to be circumvented?  The author suggests that many elected officials over the last 25 years have been primarily concerned with using the criminal law, and especially sentencing, to pursue personal and partisan political goals that send ideological signals.  Is it not unethical for policy makers to deliberately make policies that they know or ought to know will not work as envisioned?   

1. Hoffman, Paul. 2004. “Human Rights and Terrorism.” Human Rights Quarterly 26 932-955.

Summary:  Asking whether the events of 9/11 changed the world forever the author argues that the way in which the “war on terrorism” has been conducted threatens to undermine the international human rights framework so painstakingly built since the end of the Second World War.   He suggests that the impulse to abandon human rights norms in time of fear and crisis is short sighted and self-defeating and that the war on terrorism undermines our security more than any terrorist bombing ever could.   The fulfillment of universal human rights is essential to building a world in which terrorism will not undermine our freedom and security. The human rights framework does not inhibit legitimate and effective efforts to respond to terrorist attacks. The limits that international human rights law places on certain forms of executive power (e.g., the prohibition against torture) embody profound agreements about the values the international community in all of its diversity accepts as fundamental.

2. Hooks, Gregory and Clayton Mosher. 2005. “Outrages Against Personal Dignity: Rationalizing Abuse and Torture in the War on Terror.” Social Forces 83(4) 1627-1646.

Summary:  The revelations of prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shocked many in the U.S and elsewhere.  The authors criticize official rationalizations offered for the abuse. They contend that the abuses suffered at Abu Ghraib are systemic, resulting from dehumanization of the enemy and the long reliance on and refinement of torture by the United States national security agencies. They believe that there is an expansion of the practice of torture in the current war "on terror," and call on sociologists to become involved in the study of torture and prisoner abuse.

1. Giannetti, William.  2003. “Policing the Brass: A Case Study in Command Malfeasance.” Criminal Justice Ethics Summer/Fall 32-50.

Summary:  Police Departments are often perceived to be closed to outside scrutiny when, for example, a police officer who commits an act of misconduct that involves a breach of ethics is dealt with ‘in house’.  This procedure may however, not serve the interest of the public who the officer has sworn to protect.  In February 1998 a scandal erupted within the Philadelphia Police Department involving the cover up of a drunken driving incident involving a police captain.  The role played by the media in exposing the cover up highlighted the ethical complexities of relations between the police, the public and the media.

1. Cassidy, Michael.  2006. “Character and Context: What Virtue Theory Can Teach Us About a Prosecutors Ethical Duty to ‘Seek Justice’”.  Notre Dame Law Review 82(2) 100-161.

Summary:  The author discusses three of the most important ethical problems in the practice of criminal law from the viewpoint of a prosecutor.  The ethical issues are: when is it proper for a prosecutor to offer charging or sentencing concessions to an accomplice in order to secure the accomplices testimony against a co-defendant; when, if ever, may a prosecutor impeach a defense witness who the prosecutor believes has testified truthfully and how should this cross examination be conducted; and how should a prosecutor react at trial when opposing counsel appears to be advocating ineffectively on behalf of the client.