ethics in law enforcement

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=gppr20

Police Practice and Research An International Journal

ISSN: 1561-4263 (Print) 1477-271X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gppr20

Teaching police ethics: analysis of an increasingly complex teaching context

Anna Corbo Crehan

To cite this article: Anna Corbo Crehan (2019) Teaching police ethics: analysis of an increasingly complex teaching context, Police Practice and Research, 20:3, 300-312, DOI: 10.1080/15614263.2019.1598075

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15614263.2019.1598075

Published online: 29 Mar 2019.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 1966

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Teaching police ethics: analysis of an increasingly complex teaching context Anna Corbo Crehan

Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia

ABSTRACT The importance of ethics in policing and, therefore, in police education and training, is widely acknowledged. Nonetheless, disagreement often exists about the ways in which police ethics subjects should be taught and who should teach them. In this paper, three areas of debate will be critiqued, with the aim of arriving at principled responses to the underlying issues. The first issue will be whether police ethics subjects should include any ethical theory and, if so, to what extent. Related to this, but also a distinct issue in itself, is the question of whether standalone police ethics subjects should be valued over dispersing ethics learning throughout a police curriculum (e.g. as a ‘golden thread‘ running through every subject). Finally, the question of who should teach police ethics subjects will be considered. Here, the issues largely revolve around the relevant significance of philosophical expertise, knowledge and critical analysis as compared to policing expertise. Importantly, the principled responses developed in the paper will not only be theoretically sound. They will also take account of the real-world condi- tions in which many police ethics subjects are delivered, particularly situa- tions where agreements in place require police ethics subjects to be taught by both police officers and academics.

KEYWORDS Police; education; ethics; teaching; co-teaching

The inclusion of ethics in police training and education has been a topic of steady debate amongst academics and police themselves since at least the 1970s. However, it has often taken second place to discussions about ethical policing or the ethics of policing as instances of police corruption and misconduct (Prenzler & Ronken, 2010) and poor relations with specific communities have come to light. Nonetheless, the teaching of police ethics has been continuing and evolving, and it is timely to revisit four specific questions concerning how police ethics should be taught and who should teach it:

(1) Why teach police ethics? (2) At what objectives should the teaching of police ethics aim? (3) Who should teach police ethics? (4) To what extent should the content of police ethics teaching include theoretical ethics?

Apart from being fundamental questions about the teaching of police ethics, these four issues have been raised regularly throughout my own 20-plus years of teaching police ethics. The discussions to come, therefore, will draw on my experience as a key source of information, though not of course exclusively. On this point of key information sources, it is important to note that much

CONTACT Anna Corbo Crehan [email protected] Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, Charles Sturt University, NSW, Australia

POLICE PRACTICE AND RESEARCH 2019, VOL. 20, NO. 3, 300–312 https://doi.org/10.1080/15614263.2019.1598075

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

writing that is useful to discussions of police ethics teaching has been done ‘under the heading’ of professional ethics. Since police ethics is a ‘sub-species’ of professional ethics, the applicability of the latter to the former can be assumed, and so references to professional ethics will not always be identified as such. Business ethics, another ‘sub-species’ of professional ethics, has a particularly well-developed literature in relation to education, some of which is also applicable to the teaching of police ethics. References to business ethics, and any other type of professional ethics, will be identified as such when drawn on in the paper.

To ensure a focus on the four questions at issue, discussion of a number of related matters has had to be foregone. For instance, there is no consideration of how much (if at all) my own experience mirrors the experiences of others in teaching police ethics. On this point, however, I note that the questions to be addressed were also considered by Kleinig in a seminal paper in this area in 1990, and by numerous other scholars of police and/or professional ethics (as referenced throughout this paper), which suggests they have an inherent importance irrespective of how the corresponding issues have featured in my own experiences. All of the questions could withstand much more discussion than is possible here. I do not claim that the responses I develop for each are in any way exhaustive, simply that they capture critical aspects of any fully-developed response. Moreover, I believe the responses to each of the four questions apply equally to police ethics education at any stage of policing development – recruit, more experienced, senior, and managerial. This simply reflects the theoretical nature of the paper. It does not mean that exactly the same topics should be taught in exactly the same ways (police ethics teaching should begin from where the respective students are, i.e. building on and referring to the sorts of issues that police officers at the respective level will be facing). If any discussion points are limited to a specific level, say recruits, this will be indicated.

Finally, in the interests of full disclosure, and especially given the third question to be considered, I confess to being a philosopher and to having taught on police ethics subjects in that capacity. I hope, however, that I have applied the analytic traditions of philosophy sufficiently to minimise any bias that may have wanted a way in.

Method

The reliance on my own experience mirrors aspects of a number of methodologies relevant to qualitative research. It is not unlike auto-ethnography (e.g. Bulgarelli & Toassi, 2018; Pinner, 2018), though without the rigour of a carefully constructed research project. It demonstrates reflective practice (Lawrence-Wilkes & Lyn Ashmore, 2014). Most clearly, though, it is an instance of reflexive research:

In a reflexive understanding of research, not only is personal experience legitimate as a source of research focus, but personal experience itself becomes a legitimate focus (Fook, 1999, p. 17).

Fook argues that ‘using personal experience . . . in the research of professional practice’ is important for two reasons: ‘traditional empirical research cannot develop tried and tested practice knowledge which keeps pace with rapid changes’ and, therefore, ‘professionals simply rely on their own abilities to create relevant practice knowledge from their own experience, without this being made explicit and open for scrutiny. Whilst it remains tacit it remains unaccountable’ (1999, p. 18).

As noted above, police ethics per se has garnered considerable scholarly attention since around the 1970s, with the teaching of police ethics attracting very little. This has led to the situation Fook describes: teachers of police ethics creating and relying on ‘practice knowledge’, which is largely ‘unaccountable’ to the scholarly community. This paper contributes to bringing that knowledge to wider scrutiny.

In terms of methods, the ‘the characteristic methods and tools of analytic philosophy – for example, a priori reasoning, formal logic, precise analysis of natural language’ (Higgins & Dyschkant, 2014, p. 372) have been employed to analyse both my own experience and related texts.

POLICE PRACTICE AND RESEARCH 301

Why teach police ethics?

The question of why police ethics should be taught at all is one that has been put to me by students on a regular basis. Some students only raised the question out of frustration with having to engage in non-practical, ‘not exciting’ subjects within their overall course – i.e. not, for instance, ‘murder investigation, firearms, pursuit driving and unarmed self-defense’ (Marion, 1998, p. 61), others put the question quite sincerely and were genuinely puzzled. A few in the latter group saw no distinction between ‘police ethics’ and ‘ethics in general’, and so believed they had been judged ethically deficient in some way and needed to take a police ethics subject as a sort of ‘remedial exercise’. It is for this sort of reason that I have never premised my teaching of police ethics on the recommendations or guidance of any formal inquiry (such as the 1997 Wood Royal Commission into the NSW Police, and the Fitzgerald (1989) Inquiry into the Queensland Police). Calls from these bodies for police ethics education are typically responses to police misconduct or worse (which is only to be expected, given that such inquiries are not usually held into good or exemplary behaviour). Teaching police ethics is thus inherently framed as a corrective interven- tion, as precisely the ‘remedial exercise’ police students react against – although in this case, it is police collectively, rather than them personally, who are being so judged.

Far from being ‘remedial’ in any way, my teaching of police ethics is always premised on the belief that ‘The most interesting ethical problems occur when good people are trying hard to do the right thing’ (Elliott, 2007, p. 1). Of course, I cannot be absolutely sure that all the students are ‘good people’ who ‘want to do the right thing’, but nor do I ever have any reason to doubt it. Making this belief explicit helps to address any defensiveness on the part of both serving police and new recruits. In fact, it arguably reflects the three elements that Fleming identified as critical for collaborative effects between police and academics (2010, p. 139): communication (listen to the students’ concerns and then make my motivating belief clear), negotiation (adjust teaching to make this belief demonstrable), and ‘stand in the other person’s shoes’ (I too would be affronted if I thought a stranger was questing my integrity without any prior knowledge of me).

My first class for every new cohort of policing students therefore begins with the explanation of a three-pronged rationale for studying police ethics, namely: (a) that they would be making a lot of ethical decisions as police (and not just legal or practical decisions, as many students expected), (b) that they would be making those decisions in and about circumstances they would have had no previous experience of, and (c) that they would need to both explain and justify those decisions to a great number of people, both inside and outside their police organisation. The rationale was framed in this way for police recruits; for experienced police officer, the framing is in terms of ‘as you know’ (e.g. ‘as you know, you need to make a lot of ethical decisions’).

The first of these, (a), is simply a description of the sorts of decisions police make. Many of those decisions are ethical in nature because they affect other people and they are made on the basis of particular values or principles (e.g. that offenders should be treated fairly, that the rights of victims need to be protected, that police officers should be courageous). This is an important clarification to make for police students, especially those at recruit level. It demonstrates the large space within which they will be responsible for making decisions, often on their sole initiative. Within this space, the law will not prescribe the decisions they must make, and there are likely to be compelling reasons for a number of different decisions, not all of which can actually be made (i.e. some decisions will rule others out).

Kleinig identified a similar rationale to the one expressed in (b). According to Kleinig, the key reason for teaching police ethics is that policing involves

. . . situations [that] are sufficiently atypical to demand responses for which the ordinary affairs of life provide no adequate preparation . . . it cannot be presumed . . . that those who enter police work will be prepared for its moral challenges. (1990, p. 4)

302 A. CORBO CREHAN

The ethical development people will have undergone prior to becoming police officers will not have equipped them for the ethical dimensions of police work, which lie outside the parameters of ordinary life in a number of ways. Many of the situations for which police have primary responsibility are themselves atypical (not necessarily in themselves, but in terms of ordinary people’s likelihood of experiencing them). Examples include violent criminal activity, man-made and natural disasters and social disorder. Then there is the considerable power and authority that police have, which is extraordinary both in itself and in the impacts it can have. Police have the authority to act in ways that interfere with people’s most basic rights. They have the authority to stop people going about their business (e.g. to stop and question them), to deprive people of their liberty and indeed their life (e.g. arrest, and use of force and firearms), and to violate people’s privacy and dignity (e.g. bodily searches). By extension, if ordinary life has not prepared police students for the ethical aspects of police work, it certainly will not have prepared them for the emerging ethical debates that typically surround these. Current examples include laws around terrorism/counterterrorism and their impact on people’s privacy (e.g. Head, 2002), and the powers and authority available to private police (e.g. Aspland, 2011).

In addition to what their power and authority permit police to do, it also places on them a number of atypical obligations (atypical in the sense noted above). Unlike most people, police are obliged, for instance, to intervene and resolve dangerous situations (even if such intervention might at first mean a tactical withdrawal), and to provide for the well-being of people they regard as particularly wicked (e.g. a violent murderer in their custody). Further, police are often obliged to engage in actions that are typically considered wrong, e.g. the breaches of rights noted above, and lying and deceiving while doing undercover work. As Miller, Blackler and Alexandra have explained, ‘harmful and normally immoral methods are on occasion necessary in order to realise the fundamental end of policing, namely the protection of moral rights’ (2006, p. 138). Ordinary life will not, except in particularly egregious circumstances, have prepared people entering police work for the obligation of engaging in activities that in other situations are considered immoral and possibly illegal. Just the opposite should have occurred.

The third part of my rationale, (c), is similar to (b) in that it is not something for which ordinary life necessarily prepares us as a matter of course. Certainly, all of us, including those who become police officers, have experience in both explaining and justifying our ethical decisions to others (e.g. explaining to neighbourhood parents why we decided not to vaccinate our children, or to our siblings why we decided to move away from family who were relying on us for care, and then defending those decisions as good – or indeed the best – decisions to make in the circumstances). Arguably, though, we are not always held to the high standards of explanation and justification that are required of police officers. In a lot of situations, ‘reasons’ such as ‘it just seemed like the right thing to do’, or ‘what else could I have done in the circumstances’ work well enough. Actually unpicking a decision, stepping someone through the thinking that led to it (what was considered relevant, how competing claims were balanced), and then providing a robust defence of it is simply not always called for, certainly not as often as is the case in policing.

This rationale for teaching police ethics can be rendered more succinctly as: To develop police officers’ skills in making, explaining and defending the ethical decisions they make in the course of their work. While this seems to focus mostly on (c), above, it implies developing appreciation of both (a) and (b), without which (c) would not be possible. One final point: Each of (a), (b) and (c) are true of most other professions – ordinary life does not, for instance, prepare us for the moral obligation of arguing that a person should be sent to gaol for the rest of their life, nor does it necessarily make clear to us how many decisions a nurse makes are in fact ethical decisions. However, professions – by their very nature – are different and specialised (Alexandra and Miller, 2009). So, for example, a doctor training to be a police officer would have increased awareness of what sorts of decisions count as ethical ones and an understanding that some professional responsibilities run counter to ordinary responsibilities. However, their experience in this regard

POLICE PRACTICE AND RESEARCH 303

would not extend to the specificities of police work. Their prior experience with one form of professional ethics could not exempt them from formally learning about police ethics.

At what objectives should the teaching of police ethics aim?

As per my reading, only Kleinig seems to have directly addressed the question of why police ethics should be taught at all (1990), hence the paucity of references in the preceding section. The same is not true of the objectives of police ethics teaching (and, indeed, of professional ethics teaching more generally), which have been addressed by a number of scholars (e.g. Davis, 2014; Elliott, 2007; Miller & Braswell, 1985). Teaching objectives provide a finer-grained picture of what the respective teaching seeks to accomplish and, therefore, allows for more informed answers to the remaining two questions to be considered in this paper (who should teach police ethics and the amount of theory that teaching should involve). Differences between the objectives identified for police and professional ethics teaching, and in how the same term is used by various authors, are not substantive and will not impact on the following discussion.

Kleinig has identified ‘the development of moral expertise’ as the key objective for a police ethics subject (1990, pp. 10–11). He does not directly explain what he means by ‘moral expertise’. However, he does refer to students developing ‘expertise in detecting the multiple ramifications their actions may have and in mediating between the competing claims that present themselves’ (1990, p. 11), which directly links it to the rationale for police ethics identified earlier. A similar objective is described for professional ethics by Elliott as ‘developing analytical skills’ in relation to both ‘using’ ethical concepts and ‘analyzing tough philosophical concepts, such as confidentiality, privacy, justice, deception, promise keeping, moral causality, blameworthiness, and praiseworthi- ness’ (2007, pp. 39, 43). In the same vein, though more limited, Davis defines ‘improving ethical judgment’ as ‘the ability to design an acceptable course of action for the ethical problem identified (acceptable to competent members of the profession). Ethical judgment turns knowledge into an (appropriate) plan’ (2014, p. 4; emphasis added). The italicised text marks the key difference between Davis on the one hand and Kleinig and Elliott on the other in relation to this objective (broadly conceived). Davis limits acceptability to those within the relevant profession, whereas Kleinig and Elliott clearly imply (if only by not imposing a limitation) a broader sense of judgement in which the views of those within the profession are at most only one of a number of relevant considerations.

Kleinig identifies two other objectives as ‘reasonable’ for a police ethics subject – the ‘reinfor- cement of moral resolve’ and the development of ‘moral sensitivity’ (1990, p. 8), but argues that these will follow from increased moral expertise and need not be aimed at directly. He describes ethical sensitivity as policing students being ‘sensitized to perspectives other than the ones to which they are accustomed’ (1990, p. 9), with a view to their ‘possess[ing] a moral sensitivity equal to their communal responsibility’ (1990, p. 10). This differs from the ways other writers describe ethical sensitivity as a goal of professional ethics. For Davis, ethical sensitivity is ‘the ability to identify ethical problems in [the respective professional] context’ (2014, p. 4), a view mirrored by Walling who refers generally to ‘sensitivity to ethical issues’ in the context of engineering ethics (2015, p. 1647). While Elliott refers to ‘recognizing ethical issues’, she does not use the terminol- ogy of ‘ethical sensitivity’, instead describing it as ‘the ability to distinguish decisions made on an ethical basis from other kinds of decision making’ (2007, p. 41).

The development of students’ moral imagination figures in some accounts of the objectives of teaching professional ethics. Walling, for instance, refers to ‘. . . engaging students’ emotions in ethical decision making both to achieve the outcome of developing moral imagination and, in so doing, to produce ethical behaviour’ (2015, p. 1642), while Elliott refers to ‘stimulating the moral imagination’ (2007, p. 39). In addition to those already mentioned, Elliott lists two further objectives: ‘Tolerating – and reducing – disagreement and ambiguity’ (‘Learning to argue without rancor, and to disagree without personal invective’) and ‘Eliciting a sense of moral obligation’ (‘. . .

304 A. CORBO CREHAN

how I ought to direct my behavior toward others, [and]. . . also what I ought to be able to claim from others in their behavior toward me’) (2007, p. 39).

All of these objectives are consistent with the rationale developed above for teaching police ethics and will simply be accepted to progress this paper – except for Davis’s ‘improving moral judgment’ with its narrow formulation of ‘acceptability’.

In contrast to the objectives noted above, some scholars have argued that professional ethics teaching should aim at behavioural change. Walling defends the view that professional ethics teaching should aim to ‘. . . develop affective capacities and produce ethical behaviour’ (Walling, 2015, p. 1638). Davis considered ‘ethical commitment, that is, increasing the relative frequency of professional conduct’ (2014, p. 4; emphasis in original) as a possible objective for professional ethics teaching. However, he dismissed it on grounds that in my view apply to ‘behavioural change objectives’ more generally. Davis’s starting point is the assertion that ‘We should not claim to teach what we cannot show that we have taught’ (2014, p. 4). He then gives three reasons why he is doubtful about the ability of teachers to assess ethical commitment: it would be easy for students to ‘fake’ the relevant behaviour; it is ‘impractical’ to assess behavioural changes with the tools currently available to us (e.g. self-report surveys); and in any case the behaviour that would need assessing need not yet have ‘occurred’, given that it relates to students’ professional lives that are still in the future. For the reasons Davis has put forward, notwithstanding the fact that they could benefit from further clarification, behavioural change related objectives will not be con- sidered objectives that police ethics teachers should seek to secure. (Given these pragmatic limitations, I will not engage with the related debate of whether ‘teaching students to be good people . . . [should be] part of . . . the [mandate [of professional ethics teachers]’ (Walling, 2015, p. 1639), nor with the more foundational question of whether such teaching is even possible.)

Who should teach police ethics?

To reduce this very broad question to more manageable dimensions, I begin with a brief history of who has taught police ethics at my institution since my initial involvement with the subject. In its first phase, police ethics teaching was undertaken by philosophers with input from serving and retired police officers. The police provided appropriate policing context (by way of case studies, explanations of why and how particular circumstances were approached, and identification of ‘ethically tricky’ situations), to which the philosophers then applied relevant philosophical and ethical concepts. The students at this time were all experienced police officers, undertaking a police ethics subject as part of a Bachelors level degree. While a number of these subjects were developed and taught (each focussing on a different area of police work), they gradually collapsed into just one subject, and as recently as this year that one remaining subject has been taught by a non-philosopher.

During the second phase of police ethics teaching, which overlapped with the first, my institution developed a partnership with a police service for the delivery of police recruit education, and two police ethics subjects were developed for the recruit course: one to be taught prior to students’ attestation as probationary constables, and another to be taught immediately before their confirmation as constables. In relation to both subjects, the previous centrality of philosophers was devolved. Teaching teams became the norm, comprised of police officers (both serving and former1) and philosophers, usually with roughly even numbers of each. The police were appointed on the basis of university qualifications (of some sort, not necessarily or typically, in philosophy or ethics) and their policing experience. The teams did not engage in team teaching per se (i.e. one philosopher plus one police officer teaching together in class). Rather, the team became the site for something like the view described by McDonald and Donleavy in the context of business ethics: ‘It is possible to train business faculty in the nomenclature of ethics and to sensitize them the presence of ethical dilemmas in management’ (1995, p. 848). Teaching teams met before each week’s teaching, and engaged in something of a ‘mini self-teaching’ situation, with the philosophers summarising the ethical content

POLICE PRACTICE AND RESEARCH 305

to be taught and the police providing context. In this way, to paraphrase Fleming, the police members tuned the academics in to ‘the “daily rigours” of what police “do” and . . . what is actually important to [them]’ (2010, p. 141). From the academics’ perspective, a key feature of the ethics teams was that the police members saw themselves primarily as educators. This meant that the hierarchical nature of their organisation did not impinge on team meetings even though there was often considerable difference in rank amongst members (cf. Fleming, 2010, pp. 140–141). Each member of the team taught their own classes separately, with an expectation that any questions one could not answer about the other’s area would be ‘taken on notice’. This model and its underpinning view was in recent years exchanged for one where policing experience was the only quality deemed relevant for teaching police ethics, and philosophers were no longer employed at all for the relevant subjects. In this third and final phase, teaching is based on codes of conduct and/or ethics and departmental policies relevant to ethical issues (such as acceptance of gifts and conflicts of interest).

In the first of the phases described above, police ethics was understood as ‘essentially . . . a philosophical sub-discipline of applied ethics’ (Seele, 2018, p. 647). The underlying view here could be described as (to paraphrase Klein’s point about business ethics):

‘[Policing]’ qualifies ‘ethics,’ not the other way around. As such, it is ethics – its vast historical grounding and normative theoretical system building since Plato as well as its commitment to the application of a specific method of critical analysis to whatever construct, problem or behavior that is under scrutiny – which is the proper topic of any ethics course, even one entitled ‘[police] ethics’. (1998, p. 566)

On this conception, it was clearly philosophers who should teach police ethics, since they were the people warranted by a university as being the discipline experts. Critically, they could not do this without contextualising information from police officers. In effect, then, both philosophers and police were seen as necessary for the development of police ethics curriculum, and the teaching itself continued to be undertaken by the philosophers with ‘ethics subjects’ remaining in the philosophy school. For the two later phases, while some pedagogical rationales were referred to, none explicitly addressed the issue of the expertise and qualifications required for teaching police ethics, even though by the third phase it was clear that policing experience had become the sole necessary condition for teaching police ethics. Even the learning of ethical nomenclature and sensitization to ethical dilemmas that McDonald and Donleavy (995) referred to, were no longer considered important, much less necessary.

Given this background, the heading for this section is more fully stated as ‘who should teach police ethics – philosophers, police officers, or both in combination?’ A fully argued response to this question is beyond the scope of the present paper. For now, I will stipulate my answers to the question, and sketch out the reasons for them. My answer is this: Neither police nor philosophers should teach police ethics without the other; both police and philosophers are necessary for the appropriate teaching of police ethics (note the use of ‘teaching’ – unlike the first phase model referred to above, I am not suggesting that police only be involved in developing the relevant curriculum).

That philosophers alone should not teach police ethics is dictated by simple semantics: police ethics is a type of applied ethics, and applied ethics needs to be applied to something – in this case, policing. More than this though, it needs to be applied to an authentic version or description of policing. For police ethics to be of any use to students, it needs to engage them with police work as they will find it, not with some idealised or ill-informed or incomplete account of such work. Given that few philosophers also have experience in policing, they cannot provide this authenticity. Ergo, philoso- phers alone, without the benefit of police officers’ experience, should not teach police ethics.

The key reason for my view that police alone should not teach police ethics is not simply that they do not typically have the philosophical training to be identified as experts in the scholarly discipline of philosophy and ethics in particular. Rather, it relates to Kleinig’s identification of a ‘subtle problem about locating the teaching of police ethics in police academies’ (1990, p. 7). In fact, he identifies a number of possible problems, all concerned with the ways in which police identity and culture can impact on police officers’ teaching of police ethics – problems that are therefore relevant to the issue of why police ethics should not be taught by police officers solely. Due to their development of a strong

306 A. CORBO CREHAN

‘police identity’, police can lose ‘a sense of the particularity of their perspective and of the ambiguity and complexity of moral issues’ they face (Kleinig, 1990, p. 7). That is, from the perspective of police officers, the situations that raise ethical issues can become, in effect, normalised – e.g. using force to arrest an intoxicated person is ‘just the way we do that job’ and not something that should be raised or discussed as an issue, much less an ethical issue. This creates a significant limit to the material that might be addressed in police ethics classes taught by police officers, and therefore a significant limit to students’ appreciation of where and how ethical issues arise in police work.

Moreover, the nature of police work and the need police have to rely on each other while undertaking that work, creates strong bonds of loyalty between police officers – bonds that can impact negatively on how they teach ethics (Kleinig, 1990, p. 7). Case studies involving poor police decisions can be minimised in their ethical importance because ‘we can’t know what it was really like to be there’ or ‘it’s not for us to judge, we don’t know how they felt’, while reasonable ethical critique of the organisation itself (e.g. whether agreeing to government pressure to police a particular public demonstration is consistent with the role of police in a liberal democratic society) is avoided. These impacts on the teaching of police ethics are likely to promote ‘moral conformity’ rather than ‘moral autonomy’ (Kleinig, 1990, pp. 7. p. 11), making such teaching more consistent with Davis’s narrow objective of improving ethical judgement so as to make decisions ‘acceptable to competent members of the profession’ (2014, p. 4), than with the other identified objectives relating to ethical expertise and ethical sensitivity. Certainly, there will not be as much as a nod in the direction of Elliott’s ‘Learning . . . to disagree without personal invective’ (2007, p. 39).

My answer that both police and philosophers should be involved in teaching police ethics is a function of the fact that there are strong reasons for mandating that neither alone should have the sole responsibility. Further, there are good reasons for thinking that the strengths police and philosophers bring to police ethics teaching are complementary and mutually reinforcing. By way of demonstrating my claim, I will conclude this section by recounting an experience I had of proper team teaching between police and philosophers.

The best teaching of police ethics I have been involved in (i.e. which most engaged the students and managed to cover a balanced combination of ‘theory’ and ‘practice’) occurred during a residential school when a local Inspector of police team taught with me. I presented the ‘theoretical’ components of the lesson, and she then linked what I had said to her actual police work. For example, in one class I explained the concept of police having discretionary authority, and my police colleague then talked students through some specific situations she had experienced and how she had weighed up the various ethical considerations to arrive at a justifiable decision. Importantly, we were both in the room for these classes, and could clarify points with each other during our respective presentations and while answering students’ questions. Equally importantly, the Inspector referred to my ‘theoretical points’ while explaining her ‘practical experiences’, and I was able to draw on her experiences that the students had heard first-hand when revisiting the issues in later discussions and classes. From the feedback provided by students afterwards the immediate linking of theoretical concepts with actual policing situations, and the fact that the latter were provided directly by someone who had actually experienced them (i.e. rather than me reporting what a police colleague had told me), brought the issues themselves alive and demonstrated why the students were required to undertake a police ethics class. As noted previously, this latter is critically important in ensuring students remain engaged.

Having determined that both police and philosophers should be jointly involved in teaching police ethics, we turn now to the final section of the paper and the issue of how much, if any, theoretical content should be included in such teaching.

To what extent should the content of police ethics teaching include theoretical ethics?

The extent to which professional ethics subjects should incorporate ethical theory has been much debated (E.g. Davis, 2009, 2011, 2014; Gert, 2010; Harris, 2009; Lawlor, 2007). Generally, the consensus is that such subjects need not include much, if indeed any, theory in the fullest sense of

POLICE PRACTICE AND RESEARCH 307

that term – i.e. in the sense of teaching the details of theories such as consequentialism, virtue theory or Kantian ethics (I will refer to this as ‘ethical theory per se’). Davis, for example, has provided the following reason for claiming that teaching of ethical theories per se is not required in professional ethics teaching:

There is no evidence that students who take even several courses in moral theory are, all else equal, better prepared for a course in professional ethics than students who have taken none (except, of course, insofar as the professional ethics course includes moral theory). (2014, p. 7)

Other reasons cited for the same conclusion tend to be two-fold: the complexity of moral theories and the (short) time typically available for professional ethics teaching (e.g. Davis, 2014; Lawlor, 2007). Both factors militate against such theories being taught in any useful or indeed coherent way in professional ethics subjects, which in itself is a reason that they should not be taught. According to Englehardt and Pritchard (speaking about engineering ethics) ‘even if more efficient ways of presenting these theories were employed, they simply would not do the sort of work one might hope for – helping students in engineering better understand the practical ethical problems engineers face’ (2013, p. 162). According to these scholars, ethical theories per se should not be taught because they exist at a level of abstraction that simply does not lend itself to direct application to practical problems. Moreover, as Kleinig notes, ‘It is very easy to get lost in the intricacies of moral theory, to be overwhelmed by the uncertainties and disagreements, to feel completely lost and unable to cope at that level of abstraction’ (1990, p. 13).

In the context of teaching police ethics specifically, an additional reason for avoiding moral theories per se relates to the students who typically undertake police ethics subjects. While quite a number of jurisdictions now incorporate university level study into their recruit and later education programs, it is not typical for people to enter policing having had some exposure to the sort of high level abstract thinking that ethical theories require. This is not a criticism. Outside philosophy courses, such exposure is not easily come by, and there is no reason to suspect that most would-be police officers have previously studied philosophy. To require police officers, at any level, to undertake study of ethical theories per se may well discourage many people from taking up policing, people who would otherwise be good police officers. For those who do join up, such a level of learning is unlikely to engage them and encourage them to stay.

So, then, we have – if only in outline – a number of reasons for not including ethical theories per se in police ethics teaching. But does this mean that such teaching should not include any theoretical content at all? No – for two reasons. One, because in the absence of any ethical concepts at all, the resultant vacuum tends to be filled in ways that are inimical to ethical development (as per the objectives delineated earlier). Two, because without any ethical concepts at all, students simply cannot learn what it is to identify ethical issues, to make ethical decisions, or to explain and justify such decisions. We will consider each in turn.

When ethical concepts play no role in police ethics, the ‘theoretical work’ is done by profes- sional codes and organisational policies which have some ethical content (e.g. codes of conduct, policies on conflicts of interest, behavioural standards off duty, and the like). In such circum- stances, Elliott has explained, this reliance amounts to the respective documents being treated ‘as the foundations upon which the students’ work in ethics is to rest. Professional pronouncements of how practitioners should behave are treated as first principles with no further justification needed or offered’ (2007, pp. 51–52). This is wholly inconsistent with objectives concerning the identification of ethical issues or sensitivity to the range of factors that impact on ethical decisions. Moreover, treating such documents as first principles for ethical reasoning and decision-making ‘implicitly tells students that foundations for ethical reasoning are arbitrary and based on nothing more than contemporary conventions’ (Elliott, 2007, p. 52) – thereby failing to provide students with any sort of reference point for when those conventions are changed or challenged. It also (perhaps only implicitly) tells students that the only reason for acting in ways consistent with the respective codes and/or polices is because they are told to do so under threat of sanction if they do not (reasoning they will not be able to rely on when making ethical decisions in the course of

308 A. CORBO CREHAN

police work). This not only fails to promote ethical development, it may well discourage any development already in place.

Kleinig provides further reasons why codes and other internal standards should not be treated as foundational in ethics teaching. He says that ‘codes [of ethics] provide useful frameworks for ethical police work but are usually too general to provide guidance in the complex circumstances in which much police work is performed’ (1990, p. 10). Moreover, not only does he think codes are too general, he also argues that they are ‘too narrow’: ‘they frequently demand conduct of police officers that is of dubious merit – conduct that may have political merit but only a problematic moral rationale’ (1990, p. 10). Echoing Elliott’s point about first principles, Kleinig adds: ‘Such regulatory provisions may be counsels of wisdom, but if they are, they need to be shown to be so rather than, as is usually the case, presented as ethical conclusions from which no departure is permitted’ (1990, p. 10).

If police ethics should not involve either the teaching of ethical theories per se or the teaching of internal codes and policies, what should it involve? How should it develop students’ ability to identify ethical issues, to make ethical decisions, and to explain and justify such decisions? The answers lie in a middle ground that does not involve the abstraction of the one nor the relative ethical vacuum of the other. According to Davis, what is required are ‘several rough but useful ways to think about an ethical problem’ (2014, p. 7) – ways he argues that can be developed by ‘boil[ing] down moral theories [and] . . . turning them into several questions, directives, or tests . . . to help students think through ethical problems . . . (as part of a larger decision procedure)’ (2014, p. 7). As examples of the questions, directives and tests he has in mind, Davis provides a list that includes:

● Harm test – does this option do less harm than any alternative? ● Rights test – would this option violate anyone’s right, especially a human right? ● Publicity test – would I want my choice of this option published in the newspaper? (2014,

p. 7; emphases in original)

This list is not entirely defensible. For example, while the publicity test is often cited in ethics classes and ‘seems right’ in some ways, it contains a level of subjectivity that leaves it open to misuse (‘yes, I would want my choice to shoot this paedophile unlawfully in the newspaper because everyone hates paedophiles and this will be good publicity for me and my organisation’). Davis himself identifies the list as only one of many. What is important is the general ‘structure’ of what he is proposing: a decision making procedure or model, which directs students’ attention to the ethical dimensions of the decision they are facing (via questions, directives or tests), without drawing in the abstraction of moral theories per se or the ethical sparsity of codes and policies.

In my own teaching of police ethics, a similar structure was used, directing students to consider the rights, duties, and consequences in play, with one of the duties being (where relevant) the duty to act in ways consistent with organisational policies. Situated in this way, this latter obligation was treated as one of a number of ethical considerations that needed to be taken into account, not as the decisive ethical consideration (as would be the case in code/policy-based police ethics teaching). This ‘struc- ture’ is consistent with Elliott’s view that ‘Classical moral philosophy provides two fundamental tools for the teachers and students of [professional] . . . ethics. The first is method [a rational, decision making procedure], and the second is content [such as Davis’s questions, etc.]’ (2007, p. 52).

Elliott argues that while students of professional ethics should not be taught ethical theories per se, they should be apprised of ‘the power that the theories bring to considerations of practical ethics’ (2007, p. 51), an idea she spells out further in these terms:

The key to applying classical moral philosophy in the study of [professional] . . . ethics is to recognize that the different moral theories provide different tools that help us recognize and respond to particular moral features (2007, p. 58).

POLICE PRACTICE AND RESEARCH 309

Students do not need to know the theoretical heritage of ‘tools’ such as ‘think about conse- quences’, ‘think about rights’, etc. to know how to employ those tools.

The final word goes to the use of specific decision procedures or models as part of police ethics teaching. While teachers of such procedures want the students to become proficient at using these and to use them as a matter of routine, two specific issues need to be borne in mind. One: for many students, their use of such models can seem artificial or hollow (‘do you seriously think I’m going to step through this process when I’m trying to decide whether to arrest someone?’). Students need to know that once they master the process, they will then be able to use it sub- consciously, without needing to deliberately go through each step. In this way, ethical decision making should become like other processes they originally learned in a stepped fashion but now complete in a more synthesised way, such as starting a car or booking a concert ticket. Two: given we want students to reach this more integrated use of the respective decision making model, it is important for them at some point in their learning to be given the opportunity to adjust the model they have been taught in ways that make it more accessible for them. This may be as simple as using different words for the prompts, or it may involve combining prompts or even changing the order of prompts. So long as their revised process works to bring them to an informed ethical decision, there is no reason for a teacher to disallow this sort of development, especially as without it students may well default to perfunctory or superficial use of the model, not fully engaging with the problem or situation under discussion.

Conclusion

Notwithstanding the ways in which the teaching of police ethics has developed since the 1970s, the four issues discussed above remain foundational for any and all such teaching. The reasons why we teach police ethics, the objectives we aim at, the people who teach it and the theoretical content involved shape the teaching in ways that go to the very definition of teaching police ethics. As the discussion of codes of conduct, above, indicated, it is easy to be teaching something that looks like police ethics, but in critical ways is not police ethics.

The ethical dimensions of policing are becoming more complex – for instance, issues around the use of social media (by both police officers in their private time and citizens who record and comment on police actions), the growing economic need for police officers to engage in secondary employment, and the increasing array of weaponry that police can access. Against this backdrop, the importance of really teaching police ethics will increase exponentially. To ensure such teaching, the following recommendations (derived from the conclusions throughout this paper) should be considered fundamental for best practice:

● Police ethics teaching should be framed around deepening students’ understanding of the ways in which police obligations and duties differ from those of everyday life. (Students are unlikely to engage with the learning if it is presented as corrective or remedial.)

● The aim of police ethics teaching should be to improve students’ ethical decision-making skills and their ability to explain the decisions thus made. Conversely, it should not aim at goals such as making students into ‘good people’ (goals that not only cannot be assessed, but, perhaps more importantly, contradict the first recommendation, which assumes police students are basically good people).

● Team teaching by police officers and philosophers offers the best way of ensuring police ethics teaching really does focus on police ethics. (It is not satisfactory to include police officers only to help provide context to philosophers’ teaching.)

● Key ethical concepts (but not their corresponding theories per se) must be taught to ensure ethical content is included, and to avoid the relatively vacuous resort to codes of ethics and/or conduct.

310 A. CORBO CREHAN

Note

1. For ease of expression, I will use ‘police officers’ to refer to both serving and former officers, unless it is necessary to distinguish between the two.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Anna Corbo Crehan is a Senior Lecturer in Charles Sturt University’s Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, and Presiding Officer of the Charles Sturt University Human Research Ethics Committee. A philosopher by trade, her particular interests are in applied philosophy and ethics. She has published papers about a number of aspects of policing, including police ethics, obedience to authority, the policing of vulnerable people and profes- sional boundaries.

References

Alexandra, A., & Miller, S. (2009). Ethics in practice: Moral theory and the professions. Sydney: UNSW Press. Aspland, D. (2011). The other side of “big brother”: CCTV surveillance and intelligence gathering by private police.

Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 13(2), 34–48. Bulgarelli, A. F., & Toassi, R. F. C. (2018). Narrative of a teaching practice. An autoethnography about being

a Geriatrics professor. Ethnography and Education, 13(2), 172–184. Davis, M. (2009). The usefulness of moral theory in practical ethics: A question of comparative cost. Teaching

Ethics, 10, 69–78. Davis, M. (2011). The usefulness of moral theory in teaching practical ethics: A reply to Gert and Harris. Teaching

Ethics, 11, 51–60. Davis, M. (2014). Professional ethics without moral theory. A practical guide for the perplexed non-philosopher.

Journal of Applied Ethics and Philosophy, 6, 1–9. Elliott, D. (2007). Ethics in the first person. USA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Englehardt, E. E., & Pritchard, M. S. (2013). Teaching practical ethics. International Journal of Applied Philosophy,

27(2), 161–173. Fitzgerald, T. (1989). Commission of inquiry into possible illegal activities and associated police misconduct. Brisbane:

Government Printer. Fleming, J. (2010). Learning to work together: Police and academics. Policing, 4(2), 139–145. Fook, J. (1999). Reflexivity as method. Annual Review of Health Social Science, 9(1), 11–20. Gert, B. (2010). The usefulness of a comprehensive systematic moral theory. Teaching Ethics, 11, 25–38. Harris, C. E. (2009). Is moral theory useful in practical ethics? Teaching Ethics, 10, 51–68. Head, M. (2002). Counter-terrorism‘ laws: A threat to political freedom, civil liberties and constitutional rights.

Melbourne University Law Review, 26(3), 666–689. Higgins, A., & Dyschkant, A. (2014). Interdisciplinary collaboration in philosophy. Metaphilosophy, 45(3), 372–398. Klein, E. R. (1998). The one necessary condition for a successful business ethics course: The teacher must be a

philosopher. Business Ethics Quarterly, 8(3), 561–574. Kleinig, J. (1990). Teaching and learning police ethics: Competing and complementary approaches. Journal of

Criminal Justice, 18, 1–18. Lawlor, R. (2007). Moral theories in teaching applied ethics. Journal of Medical Ethics, 33(6), 370–372. Lawrence-Wilkes, L., & Lyn Ashmore, L. (2014). The reflective practitioner in professional education. London:

Palgrave Macmillan. Marion, N. (1998). Police academy training: Are we teaching recruits what they need to know? Policing: an

International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 21(1), 54–79. McDonald, G. M., & Donleavy, G. D. (1995). Objections to the teaching of business ethics. Journal of Business

Ethics, 14, 839–853. Miller, L., & Braswell, M. (1985). Teaching police ethics: An experiential model. American Journal of Criminal

Justice, 10(1), 41–54. Miller, S., Blackler, J., & Alexandra, A. (2006). Police ethics (2nd ed.). Australia: Allen & Unwin. Pinner, R. S. (2018). Re-learning from experience: Using autoethnography for teacher development. Educational

Action Research, 26(1), 91–105.

POLICE PRACTICE AND RESEARCH 311

Prenzler, T., & Ronken, C. (2010). A survey of innovations in the development and maintenance of ethical standards by Australian police departments. Police Practice and Research, 4(2), 149–161.

Seele, P. (2018). What makes a business ethicist? A reflection on the transition from applied philosophy to critical thinking. Journal of Business Ethics, 150, 647–656.

Walling, O. (2015). Beyond ethical frameworks: Using moral experimentation in the engineering ethics classroom. Science and Engineering Ethics, 21, 1637–1656.

Wood, J. (1997). Royal commission into the New South Wales police service. Final Report Volumes I-III. Sydney: NSW Government.

312 A. CORBO CREHAN