Pros And Cons Of Corruption In The Criminal Justice System

In today’s society, we live amongst people who are quick to judge others and point fingers rather than looking at the bigger picture. A hot topic, as of late, is the corruption within the criminal justice system, whether that is with our officers at the local level or within the correctional system itself. “Police corruption can be defined as actions that exploit the powers of law enforcement in return for considerations of private-regarding benefit and that violate formal standards governing his or her conduct” (Williams & Arrigo, 2008, p.96). Corruption, at its core is for nothing more than one’s own personal gain. We will explore many aspects of corruption within our police departments, corrections and how this implicates continued unethical

Being involved in the criminal justice sector, we are under constant scrutiny. Having these types of behaviors occur in the field and within our institutions creates complete distrust from our citizens and our courts. Without a trusting relationship, moving forward for the greater good is mere impossible to do. In this week’s reading by Williams and Arrigo (2008), morality is not only mutually advantageous, but is also the realization of our compassionate nature, connecting us to others through kindness, caring, and generosity. Not having trust within the system that is set forth to rehabilitate and protect our citizens from harm, creates an intricate web of failed system among the local, state and federal levels. If this were to be the case, then the billions of dollars spent towards our criminal justice system would be a complete utter waste of personal time and

If a person is hired for this position of credibility who lacks the ability to possess personal integrity and accountability, as an institutional whole, we have failed our own system. Often times, there is such a high turn-over or a need to fill an empty position that as administrators we fail to properly screen individuals to ensure that they possess the qualities needed to perform their job duties to the best of this abilities. As a means to prevention corruption, we must begin at the most basic level and work our way up through the ranks. When our employees feel supported and valued is when we see the best performances arise out of them. The current state of law enforcement with the amount of distrust and recent murders of law enforcement officer’s has created a large scale low morality amongst the force. This low morality, can and will impact a person’s overall performance which will then feed into the negative cycle that we are currently seeing without our own criminal justice