Inmate Ethical Dilemmas

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Rick Ross CJ 4200 11/10/12 Scenario 4 In this scenario, you are faced with a very tough dilemma, dealing with moral and ethical implications. On the one hand you have just witnessed an assault, on an inmate regardless of his previous history. This is clearly where the ethical implications are. On the other hand, the only proof of such an assault is your word, or that of a convicted violent criminal. Whose word you’re challenging is that of your senior officer. There is no other evidence to support your claim of inmate abuse. The “right” or ethical thing to do is to report the crime. The job of the police, corrections officers is to protect the inmates. Even if they are in there for murder, rape, assault, whatever the cause of their…show more content…
Also with him being your friend, it may be increasingly hard to turn him in for such an offence. Having your friend lose his job due to a small altercation with a convicted criminal, who is trying to provoke an incident? Your friend may be a good man with a wife and a family. Who was having a bad day, and just snapped due to the provocation of an inmate. Dose that one instance constitute him losing everything he has worked his entire life for? The simple answer is yes. However, there are a multitude of tough problems that you must weigh in your decision. It is not as cut and dry as it sounds on paper, if you actually put yourself in this situation it is a much more difficult decision to make. Plus as I stated before, you may adversely place yourself in-between the correction officers and the inmates. This could cause an extremely hostile work environment for you and could possibly result in you losing your job through malice intentions. However, as I stated before the “right” or ethical thing to do is to report the assault as a crime. Letting the criminal justice field handle the situation letting the chips fall where they may. You then allow
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