Crime and Punishment: A Conceptual and Ethical Enquiry (Ethical issues implicated in attorneys representing clients (moral agents vs. zealous advocates) as well as prosecutorial discretion and misconduct)

Running Head : Crime and Punishment

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What is ethics ? It originates from the Ancient Greek `ethiko , which is the adjective of ethos which means custom or habit . Within criminal justice , there are ethics that are applied by the parties that are involved . Such parties involved are the zealous advocates and the moral agents . The prosecutorial department has to do with the practices that are involved . The cases and the way they are handled depend on the people involved in the case . This makes them determine what

method to apply and the expected outcome . This sometimes contradicts their moral ethics in the institution . Depending on the way they handle the case , it is differentiable whether there will be a prosecutorial discretion or it is misconduct . Incase one party is favored for the sake of personal interest of the parties in the attorney , this may be referred as misconduct but if it is done for the good of the parties involved , it may be termed as prosecutorial discretion . Ethics can be termed to be personal it can be termed to be the personal decision and efforts to remain or rather to survive in a place . It deals with the concepts of good or evil , right or wrong . It can be termed as the process of holding ones stakeholder considering the account moral value of good or evil This now directs us to the term morality . We come up with a question what is morality ? According to Gert 1998 , Morallity is an informed public system applying to all rational persons , governing behavior that affect others and has the lessening of evil or harm as its goals ' The most important part is that morality applies to all rational people and also that it also provides a system of governing behavior . This system of governing behavior is called the code of ethics or rather code of conduct . In morality , ethics comes in when you attach an ultimate purpose or object to it (Leighton Riemann , 2001 , 270

When it comes to criminal justice , the issue of ethics comes in as applied ethics and also as a professional ethics . The words such as the `right ' and `wrong ' are substituted for good or bad . On the other hand ethics or pure ethics digs deep or rather is concerned with the role of morality when formulating ethical systems rather than the ultimate purpose of morality . Thus , it can be said that ethics is the theory of morality and when we come to the practical , professional part , there we meet the applied ethics . Every organization has got its ethics and it is there ethics which are commonly referred to as the professional code of ethics that govern a company in dealing with what it consider good or wrong (Braswell et al , 2005 , 400

However , there are ethical issues that are realized in the criminal justice system . These issues have to do with the relationship between the advocate and the client and also between the advocate and the...