Ethics and Necessity of Truth in Criminal Justice

Lying may be defined as making false or misleading statements for purposes of deception. One may lie to protect one’s self or another, one may lie for personal advantage, and one may even lie to be humorous. Lying is generally regarded as unethical, if not sinful, because it destroys trust, the most fundamental basis for all peaceful human interaction. Be that as it may, lying is doubtless as old as civilization and because of the necessity for truth in social relations, it is likely that techniques for detecting lies are as old as lying itself. Although historical techniques for determining veracity doubtless met with some measure of success, most likely as a bluffing tool to coerce what at least appeared as truth, these techniques were of questionable reliability.

Nowhere is there a greater need for truth than in criminal justice operations. Practitioners must be honest people and the success of the justice process is completely dependent on the ability of practitioners to determine the truth in all cases. Perhaps more than any other reason, the development of modern, professional policing drove a perceived need to develop a scientific tool for detecting

In addition to the inherent problems related to the validity of polygraphs, there are many factors that should be considered in determining a candidate’s suitability for a law enforcement career, and many dimensions to those factors, that a onedimensional means, such as a polygraph, cannot be the basis for a fair assessment. Due to such misapplications of the polygraph it is certain that well qualified persons have been passed over for police employment to the detriment of the agency and community, as well as to the potential employee. It is also certain that less suitable persons have been hired as the result of the polygraph when a more thorough, multidimensional background investigation would have weeded them