12.1: Introduction

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Readers are advised that for this material to make sense to them, it is essential that they do not park their brains at the door! Simply put, bring forth knowledge obtained from previously engaged disciplines of Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Criminology, and History to name a few. There is no one single silver bullet that provides a simple answer to social issues. Simply put the etiology of ethics is tangential at best.

The awesome responsibility of local, state and federal governments to provide safe environments for its citizens is greater than one can imagine, but is often taken for granted and more so often generates a sense of complacency by citizens. No greater responsibility is vested in persons to carry out the function of protection and safety than on the members of the United States Military and the police officers within the near 18,000 police agencies in this country (Reaves, 2011). Generally this task is fused within statutory authority, partially due to the reasonable societies entering into the social contract theory. The social contract theory can be found in the early writings of philosophers such as Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato, into the social contract thinker era of Thomas Hobbes (1651), John Locke (1689), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762), and within the fabric of our justice system (Albanese, 2012; Pollack, 2010).

The Social Contract theory institutes a suitable affiliation between members of society and their government. Social contract argues that individuals willingly relinquish certain freedoms and unite into political societies, abiding by common rules, and accepting the corresponding duties of providing protection from one another and other types of harm. The social contract theory provides that law and political order are the creation of man and contrived for the purpose of public tranquility administered by government (Albanese, 2012; Pollack, 2010).

The United States is a country that is governed by the “Rule of Law.” Government in the U.S. gains its statutory authority through the U.S. Constitution, which further organizes and structures societies into state governments with State Constitutions, which is further subdivided into smaller units of governmental municipalities with local codes. The social contract theory, vests in police the authority to address public behaviors, laws and norms on behalf of societal members. This means that society have given up the right to address grievances against them (Pollock, 2010). Through the social contract theory the police are willingly provided their authority and power by its citizenry. At the same time, society has expected and continues to expect the highest degree of integrity, professionalism, accountability, and trustworthiness, and ethical behavior from their police during the process (Conditt, 2001; Seron, Pereira, & Kovath, 2004).

The ethical make-up of police officer candidates, which eventually become police officers, is critical to the organizational integrity of the agency (Pollack, 2010). A significant fashion by which society measures the organizational integrity is generally through the conduct of its personnel. This dimension entails misconduct, social deviance, or misrepresentation of public trust either on duty or off duty by police officers that undermines the public's faith in its police (Palmiotto, 2001). Albanese (2012) contends,

Ethics is central to criminal justice because morality is what distinguishes right from wrong-in differentiating the government’s moral authority to enforce the law from the immorality of the crime itself… Only by being moral can criminal justice be distinguished from the very crime it condemns (p. 3).

Thus far, readers have availed them self to ethical leadership, corruption, attempting to distinguish between deviance and crime, and made mention of suitable, efficient selection of police officers to perform ethically in an unethical society. This section is intended to illustrate the police officer selection process as a key component of organizational effectiveness. Specifically emphasizing the initial selection is an important phase of developing organizational integrity. This can develop the first stage of future leadership within the police organization. The police middle manager and police leaders are responsible for establishing the ethical environment and climates of their departments. The control of police corruption is virtually impossible when police management fails to address unethical behaviors of its officers (Vito, Wolfe, Higgins, & Walsh, 2011).