Ethics crime and criminal justice williams & arrigo

Considering Character

Psychologists, criminologists, and others who study criminal behavior have, for some time now, dedicated substantial attention to a certain subgroup of offenders: those often described in everyday language as the embodiment of evil. While we suggested in Chapter 2 that the majority of “evil” in the world results from well-intentioned people making poor choices as they go about their everyday activities, there remain inexplicable acts of harm and cruelty that can only be described as wicked acts of bad people. The label psychologists typically reserve for the worst of such people is that of the psychopath—those described by Robert Hare as “social predators . . . [c]ompletely lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret.”1

Fortunately, psychopaths are rare, accounting for only about 1 percent of the population, and up to 25 percent of jail and prison inmates,2 and news-making crimes commonly associated with psychopathic offenders, such as serial homicide and sadistic sexual assault, represent only a very small percentage of all criminal offenses. However, there is at least one important parallel between our moral evaluations of the heinous crimes of some psychopathic offenders and far more common instances of schoolyard bullying, callous property offending, or manipulative heartbreaking. In both kinds of cases, we tend not only to negatively assess the action, but also the person engaging in that action. We say not that the bully is a good person who made a poor choice or didn’t fully consider the consequences of his actions; rather, we are more apt to assume that the bully is a certain type of person—one with enduring personality characteris- tics that lead to him to consistently demonstrate selfish behavior patterns, disregard for the welfare of others, and so forth. For most, there is an important relationship between evil deeds and evil persons. Our discussion of normative ethics, then, must account not only for actions and consequences, but also for types of people.

In the previous two chapters, we explored normative ethical theories that concentrate on the con- sequences of our actions and on our actions themselves. Consequentialist ethics asks that we consider the results of our actions, with those that produce the greatest benefit (i.e., good consequences)—for oneself and/or others—being the “right” ethical choice in a given situation or with regard to a particular issue. Deontological ethics, in turn, asks that we consider relevant duties and principles, making choices and engaging in actions that are consistent with those duties and principles. What each has in common is an emphasis on doing. The overriding question of both types of theories is, “What should I do?”

Ethics, Crime, and Criminal Justice, Second Edition, by Christopher R. Williams and Bruce A. Arrigo. Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.

G A R R E T T , M E G A N 1 3 2 4 T S

The importance of actions and consequences notwithstanding, what each of these types of theo- ries fails to consider is the types of people we should be. When we shift moral focus from our actions and their consequences toward the notion of good moral character, we begin asking ques- tions common to the third major tradition of normative ethics—that of virtue ethics.

Virtue ethics is the eldest of all ethical traditions, having its roots in the ancient Greek and Roman moral philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Epicureans, as well as a storied history in Eastern philosophical traditions such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Each of these philosophers and philosophical traditions shares an interest in examining what it means to lead a “good” life, with the “goodness” of our lives having much to do with the kinds of people that we are. In short, they are each concerned with our being virtuous people. The principal question asked and contemplated by the virtue tradition is, “What kind of person should I be?” Consequently, our goal or task as moral people is to develop into and continue to be that type of person; that is, to develop certain types of character traits (i.e., virtues), while seeking to “avoid or extinguish” others (i.e., vices).3 In this third and final chapter on normative ethics, we explore this eldest of all ethical traditions and the crucial questions it poses about what it means to be a moral person.