Police ethics and integrity: breaking the blue code of silence

This article analyzes evidence from a survey of police officers who were asked about their attitudes towards police corruption, unethical behaviour and minor infringements of police rules. It reveals that most of the officers who took part in the study regard certain actions, such as those involving the acquisition of goods or money, as much worse than behaviour involving illegal brutality or bending of the rules in order to protect colleagues from criminal proceedings. It also reveals that officers who responded to the survey are relatively unwilling to report unethical behaviour by colleagues unless there is some sort of acquisitive motive or outcome predicted. Overall the findings support the existence of cultural 'blue code' and 'Dirty Harry' beliefs systems surrounding police rule bending, but also provide an initial study of a small sample (n=275) that point to the value of further investigation

Can our Hands Stay Clean?

This paper argues that the dirty hands literature has overlooked a crucial distinction in neglecting to discuss explicitly the issue of, what I call, symmetry. This is the question of whether, once we are confronted with a dirty hands situation, we could emerge with our hands clean depending on the action we choose. A position that argues that we can keep our hands clean I call “asymmetrical” and one that says that we will get our hands dirty no matter what we do I call “symmetrical”. Not acknowledging this distinction is a problem because, firstly, it adds to the existing confusions about how best to define what dirty hands are. Secondly, it prevents the concept of dirty hands from being applied properly to other contexts such as, for example, the responsibility and accountability of politicians. I argue that we have good reason to favour a symmetrical understanding because it gives a more convincing account of what makes an action dirty and because it more accurately captures our complex moral decision-making when faced with dirty hands situations. The paper concludes by outlining possible implications that the distinction between the symmetry view and the asymmetry view has on wider debates surrounding the problem of dirty hands