Ethical Decision Making-Process

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Ethical Decision Making-Process

Introduction

Life has numerous decisions that people have to make when faced with varying life circumstances. The process of validating these choices becomes more complicated when a person is deciding for many people. For example, when a teacher makes decisions that will affect students, they have a more significant burden than a person making a decision for their personal good. The same level of responsibility is extended to police officers who have to make choices that will affect many people in a community setting. Law enforcement is especially rife with dilemmas and high moral expectations, mainly when police deal with criminals. The high level of oversight and need to maintain law and order leads to a significant debate on policing ethics. To support the police with their daily decision-making and solve urgent matters, the use of ethical decision-making comes in handy to streamline law enforcers' operations. Therefore, the existence of a systematic way of choosing the course of actions by police is vital in instilling public confidence in legal systems and creating an interactive environment between law enforcement officers and civilians. This term paper discusses the ethical decision-making process and how it is relevant to police ethics.

Ethical Decision-Making Process

Gather facts

The first step in ethical decision-making is collecting, understanding, and effectively interpreting facts regarding a particular scenario. According to Morreale and Bond (2016), facts are essential in any situation that requires critical thinking and coming up with a better choice. In police service, gathering facts entails ensuring the crime scene's information is sufficient in making certain conclusions. For example, an officer of the law may have information that a particular minor criminal is armed. It would be the duty of the officer to confirm such allegations before proceeding to use excessive force. Facts are essential in everyday decision-making and set the foundation of every human being's determination. Morreale and Bond (2016) further explained that gathering facts is the only sure way of making an evidence-based conclusion regarding a situation. In the absence of facts, police officers' decisions can only be termed as allegations and ineffective and can lead to legal actions being taken against such law enforcers.

Identify the ethical issue.

The second stage of the ethical decision-making process is identifying the moral issue. Wyatt-Nichol and Franks (2009) explain the possibility of the existence of more than one ethical issue during decision making. The duty of identifying the prevailing ethical problem in law enforcement is left at the hand of officers to analyze a situation and pinpoint a moral issue that needs to be solved. However, Morreale and Bond (2016) indicate that it is not always easy to identify an ethical issue due to bias among law enforcers. Instead, Morreale and Bond (2016) advise that policemen and women should have an ability to focus on facts, remain objective, and be guide by their extensive training when identifying the ethical issue prevalent in a particular circumstance. Effective identification of ethical problems creates a better opportunity for law enforcers to apply moral and ethical values in making ethical and evidence-based conclusions.

Mapping affected parties.

The third step towards making ethical decisions is to ensure one understands the parties affected by such a decision. For example, in the classroom setting, when a teacher makes decisions regarding assignments, the affected parties entail the students because they have to comply with the class instructor's directives. The same scenario applies in law enforcement. Unlike teachers, police decisions have far-reaching repercussions since they affect diverse groups of people in society. For example, police force decisions will affect the poor, the rich, disabled, as well as young and old. Understanding the affected parties before making any decision plays a key role in ensuring a greater good is attained within the community. Law enforcers decision should always factor in the primary and secondary stakeholders and find a decision that can serve all parties equally (Westmarland & Rowe, 2018). Besides, it is essential to include stakeholders since they set the bases for compliance, reducing police-civilian friction.

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