Ethics in Criminal Justice

Ethics in Criminal Justice: In Search of the Truth, Fifth Edition, provides an introduction to the fundamentals of ethical theory, doctrines, and controversies, and the rules of moral judgment. It presents ethics as an "umbrella of civility under which the law becomes more meaningful and rational, and easier to obey. It also rejects the view that ethical knowledge and moral character are peripheral to the administration of justice.
The discussion is organized into two perspectives: a thematic perspective that examines ethical principles common to all components of the discipline, such as wisdom, goodness, morality, and justice, as well as the common vices of deception, racial prejudice, and egoism; and an area-specific perspective that addresses the state of ethics in policing, corrections, and probation and parole. The book covers major concepts of the Stoicism school, the hedonistic school, the virtue school, the religious school, the naturalistic school, the utilitarian school, the duty school, the existential school, and the social justice school. The works of the following are discussed: Epictetus (Stoicism); Aristippus and Epicurus (hedonism); Plato and Aristotle (virtue); Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas (religion); Hobbes and Nietzsche (naturalism); Bentham (utilitarian); Kant (duty); Sartre and de Beauvoir (existentialism); and Rawls (social justice).

• A classical approach to the study of ethics in criminal justice
• Challenges the reader to emphasize and restore ethics in their part of the criminal justice field