POLICE ETHICS

Police Ethics

Police Ethics

An ethic of police professionalism must take into account not only the social role of police but also the various contexts in which police activity takes place. Although we tend to give a certain preeminence to street officer-citizen encounters, there are, in fact, many different contexts in which professionalism may be exhibited (or betrayed).

For Lon Fuller (1902-1978), the basic function of law is to guide human conduct. Fulfillment of this function requires compliance with desiderata—such as clarity and nonretrospectivity—that constitute an “internal morality of law” and impose limits on what can qualify as law. He argues that ...