Police Ethics: A Critical Perspective

Much of the current scholarship on police ethics ignores the fundamental impact of the rational-purposive organization on ethical decisionmaking. As a consequence, debate has remained relatively sterile, quibbling, as it does, about whether deontological, teleogical, or other moral theories provide solutions to moral dilemmas. This debate has failed to take into account a set of structural preconditions to ethical discourse or, for that matter, to comprehend the practical issues at stake in ethical discussion and training. This article introduces Habermas's distinction between technical and symbolic communicative frameworks as a promising strategy for rethinking ethical decisionmaking in the police occupation. This symbolic-interactive approach establishes bilateral communication, role reciprocity, and binding consensual norms as essential ingredients for an efficacious ethics code. Although the article concludes that modern police organizations, as presently constituted, do not offer a favorable environment for these conditions, it suggests ways of debureaucratizing policing to foster their development.