The Crime and Punishment course will scrutinize the countless ways that moral and ethical considerations inform decision-making procedures that constitute a great deal of of the professional and intimate enterprise of the criminal justice staff. Police officers, corrections officers, probation and parole officers, youth service officers, federal law enforcement agents, and court professionals are all addressed each day to make significant decisions that substantially influence the lives of those entrusted to them. It is our societal expectation that criminal justice professionals will base their decisions on ethics and morality.
In this course you will reflect on applications of principled actions as they relate to aspects of social justice. You will formulate a firm notion of “our” definition of just what constitutes social justice over the time of the course. In reaching the functioning definition, and in the study of ethics and moral decision-making, you should first look at what our present personal belief system is concerning morality and ethics. What, if any, is the distinction between the two concepts? What do we mean when we say that a certain course of action is based on proper moral considerations? What are ethics? And what is the role of virtue in all of this? Character?
When I took this course we used the Crime & Punishment course text by Cyndi Banks: Criminal Justice Ethics: Theory and Practice. This is an excellent resource which will help you analyze ethical considerations facing criminal justice professionals today. This course was also supplemented with six outside readings; four of them being research studies and essays from the Journal of Criminology & Public Policy, an established publication of the American Society of Criminology (ASC). These readings are meant to reveal scholarly writings from peer-reviewed journals.
I certainly enjoyed this course and I have taken a lot from it. I did all of my criminal justice courses online. You may not see this course on your class schedule with the same course name. However, over the span of your educational journey you will be exploring ethical and moral issues within the criminal justice system. This is an integral part of criminal justice education, which will open your mind to a whole new way of thinking. I hope you’ll enjoy it. Good luck.
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