Ethics and Criminal Justice

This textbook looks at the main ethical questions that confront the criminal justice system – legislature, law enforcement, courts, and corrections – and those who work within that system, especially police officers, prosecutors, defence lawyers, judges, juries, and prison officers. John Kleinig sets the issues in the context of a liberal democratic society and its ethical and legislative underpinnings, and illustrates them with a wide and international range of real-life case studies. Topics covered include discretion, capital punishment, terrorism, restorative justice, and re-entry. Kleinig’s discussion is both philosophically acute and grounded in institutional realities, and will enable students to engage productively with the ethical questions which they encounter both now and in the future – whether as criminal justice professionals or as reflective citizens.

Author Biography

John Kleinig is Director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics and Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Law and Police Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and he holds the Charles Sturt University Chair of Policing Ethics in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Australian National University.