Cambridge Applied Ethics: Ethics and Criminal Justice: An Introduction

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.

Introduction; Part I. Criminalization: 1. Civil society: its institutions and major players; 2. Crime and the limits of criminalization; 3. Constraints on governmental agents; Part II. Policing: 4. Tensions within the police role; 5. The burdens of discretion; 6. Coercion and deception; Part III. Courts: 7. Prosecutors: seeking justice through truth?; 8. Defence lawyers: zealous advocacy?; 9. The impartial judge?; 10. Juries: the lamp of liberty?; Part IV. Corrections: 11. Punishment and its alternatives; 12. Imprisonment and its alternatives; 13. The role of correctional officers; 14. Re-entry and collateral consequences.