What does ethics mean in criminal justice

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10 The Virtuous and the Vicious:

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?”

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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.

VIRTUE AND VICE

Think of the people that you most admire ethically—people that can and do commonly serve as ethical role models or after whom you pattern (or try to pattern) your own moral behavior. Now, consider if you will what all of those people have in common. Most likely, it is not that they were all skilled at considering the consequences of their actions. It is also probably not that they were steadfastly committed to certain ethical imperatives and always placed their duty to abide by certain moral laws above all else. While they may have demonstrated one or both of these quali- ties, it is more likely that what they all have in common is that they are all certain types of people. Perhaps the people that came to mind are historical figures such as Jesus, the Buddha, Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King Jr.; perhaps they are parents, family, friends, or teachers. In any case, what the people we most admire as exemplars of moral goodness seem to share is usually not so much about what they do, but the types of people they are. They tend to be caring people, compassionate, forgiving, merciful, respectful, and considerate of the needs and interests of others. In short, when we think of ethical or moral people, we probably think of what moral philosophers would call virtuous people.

Virtue and Character

When we talk about the types of people that we or others are, we usually do so in terms of character traits. A character trait is “a tendency to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances.”4 Character traits can dispose us toward moral or immoral behaviors; they can encourage us to be honest, responsible, and considerate of the needs and interests of others, or incline us to be dishonest, decep- tive, fraudulent, irresponsible, or indifferent to or harmful toward others. What is important about character traits is not only that they define us as people, but that they dispose us to act in certain ways when we encounter certain types of situations.

When taken together, character traits define a person’s character. By character, we mean a collection—a “cluster, or perhaps system”—of character traits as they appear in a given person.5 Thus, a person who possesses the individual traits of honesty, integrity, humility, and self-respect possesses an overall character that is constituted by these dispositions. Ultimately, as we will see, being a “good” or virtuous person requires more than simply possessing a few

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190 Part 3 • Normative Ethics: Theory and Application

individual character traits; rather, it is about possessing a collection of traits that work together to generate a moral character that is typified by its collective “goodness” (see Box 10.1).

While it is common in everyday language to refer to “character traits,” moral philosophers have historically used the more specific terms virtue and vice to refer to traits of character that are regarded as “good” or “bad” in moral contexts. Good character traits such as honesty and integrity are considered moral virtues, while traits such as selfishness and arrogance are regarded as moral vices. Most generally, then, moral virtues are traits of character that dispose a person to act in a moral fashion, while moral vices are traits of character that dispose a person to act in an indifferent or harmful fashion. In the remainder of our discussion of moral character, we will typically use the terms “moral virtues” and “moral vices” rather than the more generic term “character traits.” Here are but a few character traits that are widely regarded as virtues:6

Benevolence Compassion Courage Faithfulness Generosity Gratitude Honesty Humility Integrity Justice Kindness Loyalty Mercifulness Modesty Nonharm Open-mindedness Patience Politeness Prudence Reliability Responsibility Self-control Self-respect Sincerity Tactfulness Tolerance Trustworthiness Unselfishness Wisdom

BOX 10.1

Virtue and Leadership

As Judith Boss points out, people tend to emulate those who are at a higher stage of moral development. Because of this tendency, placing virtuous persons in leadership roles can have a positive moral impact on an entire organization, community, or society. Think of persons you know who are in leadership roles—presidents, legislators, judges, police chiefs— and discuss whether those people serve as good moral role models by exhibiting virtue. What virtues should

persons in such positions embody? What, if any, vices should they embody? What are the dangers of embodying different virtues and vices for each of the following positions?

• The President of the United States • Legislators in your state • Judges and Supreme Court Justices • Chiefs of Police

VIRTUE, CHARACTER, AND BEHAVIOR

Moral virtues are thus dispositions to act, out of habit, in ways that benefit self and others.7

Compassion, generosity, and tolerance, for instance, are most always cited as examples of virtue—as character traits that, when motivating action, stand to benefit all those affected by the action. Persons of virtuous character are those who are disposed to act in ways compas- sionate, generous, and tolerant in situations that demand such actions. Importantly, to say that we act out of habit or in light of virtue is different from saying that we act on principle or in consideration of consequences. Instead, dispositions and habits are part of who we are as people. As we will see, however, this does not mean that we somehow either have these virtues

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Chapter 10 • The Virtuous and the Vicious: Considering Character 191

Good Intentions

Virtuous Character

Right Actions Good

Consequences

FIGURE 10.1 Correlativity of Character, Action, and Consequences

or do not (e.g., as a function of personality); rather, virtue is something that, through regular practice, one comes to and continues to embody.

The exercise of virtue, then, does not follow from rational reflection or a desire to conform to duty; rather, it simply emanates from the person herself or himself. In other words, persons who demonstrate prudence through their choices and actions tend to be prudent people. This does not, however, mean that we should regard virtue as independent of actions and conse- quences. Rather, it is important to realize that there is a strong correlation between character and behavior. Though admittedly oversimplified, on the whole we can think of the relationship as depicted in Figure 10.1

In other words, virtuous character gives rise to good intentions which lead to right actions which produce good consequences. Part of the reason that right actions and good consequences are less significant in the virtue tradition than character is that the former tend to follow automat- ically from the latter. In other words, if we are virtuous people, we will almost invariably engage in right actions and right actions, in turn, often lead to good consequences. It would be difficult, for instance, for the kind person not to act kindly; it would be difficult for she or he who is compas- sionate to act other than compassionately. Virtue ethics recognizes that if we focus on character, ethically sound choices and behaviors will often follow (see Box 10.2).

Virtue and Negative Emotions

Virtues are not only tendencies to act in certain ways in certain situations, they are also tenden- cies to think, feel, believe, and desire in certain ways.8 Humility, for instance, has much to do with how we think about ourselves, our accomplishments and importance, while tolerance has much to do with how we think and feel about others. Having moral character is not simply a matter of being disposed to have good intentions and engage in right actions, but also concerns the psycho- logical states that give rise to intentions and that inform our choices and behaviors.

Especially problematic within the virtue tradition are incentives for human action that stem from “negative emotions”—often referred to as vices. Whereas virtues are dispositions to act in ways that benefit self and others, vices are traits of character or dispositions to act in ways that are indifferent toward or that harm oneself and/or others. In other words, vices are those characteristics that interfere with our capacity to be moral and that dispose us toward

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192 Part 3 • Normative Ethics: Theory and Application

indifference or harm rather than morally desirable behavior. Below is a list of some character traits that are widely regarded as vices or “ways-of-being” that are in some ways harmful to oneself and/or others:9

Arrogance Callousness Cowardice Cruelty Dishonesty Disloyalty Envy Faithlessness Greed Ignorance Impatience Imprudence Ingratitude Insincerity Intolerance Irascibility Irresponsibility Jealousy Laziness Manipulativeness Mercilessness Prejudice Promiscuity Rudeness Selfishness Servility Shamelessness Tactlessness Unreliability Untrustworthiness

BOX 10.2

Actions and Intentions

Consider the following two scenarios:

Ralph is independently wealthy. Several years ago, he sold a company that he owned for a hefty $400 million. As part of that deal, he continues to receive an annual “payment” of $4 million per year. Yesterday, Ralph donated $1 million to Cure for Cancer—a charitable organi- zation. His donation, of course, is tax deductible. In addition, Cure for Cancer has decided to use the money to open the “Ralph Research Center.”

Louisa is a seventy-two-year-old widow who is currently unemployed and lost her entire retirement savings in an investment scandal. She has no savings, no checking account, no investments, and about $20 in her purse to last her until next week. While walking down- town yesterday, she came upon a home- less person who seemed tired, hungry, and suffering a good deal. After talking with him for several minutes, Louisa took her last $20 to the grocer on the corner and bought the homeless person food and a warm jacket.

Looking at the stories of both Ralph and Louisa, who would you consider to be the most virtuous?

Why? The difference between the two is not the action, nor is it the consequences of those actions. Ralph’s donation might be regarded as a right action with overall good consequences—particularly for himself. Louisa also performed what would likely be considered a moral action. The consequences of her charity, however, will not have the large-scale impact that Ralph’s did.

This, however, is where virtue ethics differs somewhat from Kant’s ethics and from utilitarian ethics in particular. Virtuous persons act on the basis of an “underlying disposition of concern for the well- being of others and themselves.” Louisa’s actions, it would appear at least, were motivated by just such a concern—she acted, in short, out of compassion. One might have difficulty, however, saying the same of Ralph’s actions. More likely, Ralph donated to the Cure for Cancer Foundation not out of compassion for persons with cancer, but largely from self-interest. While Ralph’s actions have far-reaching consequences, most of us would likely consider Louisa to be the more virtuous (and, therefore, moral) of the two. If we were interested only in consequences, we would be logically forced to regard Ralph’s actions as of higher moral quality. This is a function of something to which utilitarian moral philosophers do not attend; namely, the role of intention.

Source: Jupith Boss, Ethics for Life (Mountain View: CA. Mayfield, 2001). Quote is from p. 405.

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Chapter 10 • The Virtuous and the Vicious: Considering Character 193

Part of the importance or value of virtue is that it enables us to overcome these sorts of negative emotions, desires, and tendencies. Contemporary virtue ethicist Philippa Foot suggested that virtues are corrective—they “correct” our tendencies toward indifference or harm.10 The virtues of compassion and forgiveness, for instance, help us to overcome tendencies toward anger, hatred, and the desire for revenge; open-mindedness can help us overcome tendencies toward prejudice; and humility and modesty can help us overcome arrogance and excessive pride. Virtues not only have the positive function of disposing us to do good, but have the negative function of aiding us in overcoming tendencies to think, feel, and act in ways that are immoral or otherwise demonstrate a lack of moral goodness (see Box 10.3).

VIRTUE AND THE GOOD LIFE

Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) is perhaps the most widely recognized and widely discussed of virtue ethicists. Some would argue, in fact, that his Nichomachean Ethics (titled in reference to his son, Nichomachus) is the most important book ever written on ethics and morality. In any case, it is a text of crucial significance in philosophy, ethics, and virtue ethics more specifically. While some of Aristotle’s conclusions have since been the subject of controversy, his general theses about morality, virtue, and the “good life” are mainstays in discussions of ethics. In what follows, we outline several ideas that play a central role in the Nichomachean Ethics and that are vital to our discussion of virtue and its importance.11

BOX 10.3

Crime, Anger, and Forgiveness

In a recent essay on the role of virtue in criminal justice, Williams argues that the vice of resentment has come to define the American public’s attitude toward crimi- nal offenders and, consequently, has come to play an important role in many criminal justice practices (e.g., determinate sentencing, capital punishment). Problematically, he argues, the embodiment and expression of resentment and related desires for vengeance, retribution, and punishment more often lead only to further harm. Virtues such as forgiveness and mercy are crucial in helping us to overcome the negative emotions of resentment and the passion for revenge and punishment.

The emotional experience of anger, Williams sug- gests following Aristotle, is not one and the same with the belief that the offender should endure harm as a consequence of her or his offense. The experience of anger is justified; in fact, ignoring, overlooking, or for- getting about harms caused would be equally vicious (a deficiency indicative of an absence of proper anger). Yet the desire to express anger through harming the

offending party is a learned response to those initial feelings. Alternatively, the virtue of forgiveness asks not that we cease to feel anger, but that we overcome the desire to cause further harm that often issues from our emotional experience of anger. In this case, forgiveness “checks” anger, encouraging us to feel it with proper intensity and for the right length of time. Excessive anger can easily lead to hatred and the desire to respond excessively to an offense, causing more harm that what is called for.

Do you feel that the American criminal justice sys- tem is built upon resentment or the desire for vengeance and retribution? What practices demonstrate this? What practices are at odds with this claim? What role do you feel forgiveness plays in our current system of criminal justice? What role can or should forgiveness play?

Source: Christopher Williams, “Toward a Transvaluation of Criminal ‘Justice’: On Vengeance, Peacemaking, and Punishment,” Humanity and Society, 26 (2), 100–116 (2002); reprinted in Joseph L. Victor (Ed.), Annual Editions: Criminal Justice 05/06 (Dubuque, IA: McGraw-Hill).

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194 Part 3 • Normative Ethics: Theory and Application

The Purpose of Human Life

Aristotle begins the Nichomachean Ethics by offering a simple but significant point—every action and every pursuit aim at some end or good.12 In other words, all actions are done for a reason or purpose. Why do we wake up in the morning? Eat breakfast? Brush our teeth? Go to school or work? To each of these questions we could no doubt offer one or more reasons (e.g., because we want to be healthy, because we want to make money or earn college credit). For Aristotle, however, each of these reasons has a further aim or purpose—we want to earn college credit so that we can get a job, we want a job so that we can earn money, we want to earn money so that we can . . . and so on. Ultimately, Aristotle tells us, all of these aims are motivated by one overriding aim or purpose. What is this ultimate aim or “highest good” toward which all of our actions in some way lead?

ARISTOTLE’S TELEOLOGY In asking what we aim at in life, Aristotle was ultimately concerned with what makes a life worthwhile or “good.” Answering this question, however, requires some understanding of the ultimate purpose of human life. It is only once we know the purpose of human life that we can begin to talk about what a “good” human life would be. This notion of “purpose” is fundamental to Aristotle’s ethics and his philosophy more generally. Aristotle has a teleological (end, purpose, goal) view of the world, meaning that he understands behavior to be goal-directed or aimed at achieving some purpose or end. Everything in the world—from inani- mate objects such as knives, to plants and animals, to human beings has some “inborn” purpose. Knives cut, flowers blossom, caterpillars turn into butterflies, and so forth. If we know that the purpose of knives is to cut, then we can deduce that a “good” knife is one that cuts well; if we know that the purpose of a flower is to blossom, we might say that a flower which has blossomed has in some sense lived a good, meaningful life in that it has fulfilled its purpose.

INTRINSIC GOODNESS Aristotle applies this same logic to human purpose and existence. What is the highest human good or ultimate purpose of human existence? Before looking more closely at this idea of “purpose” as it relates to human life, we need to revisit an idea we were exposed to in Chapter 2 and again in Chapter 8. In our discussion of values, we briefly discussed the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental goods and values—the former being those things that are good in themselves, and the latter being those things that are good only because they allow us to get some higher or more important good. Money, status, and power, for instance, are instrumental goods in that they are valuable only to the extent that they allow us to achieve or maintain other things that are more intrinsically valuable or desirable. Other things such as health and knowledge are regarded by many to have intrinsic value. Even if health and knowledge may help us to achieve or maintain other goods (in fact, they may even be necessary to achieve or maintain certain other goods), they are valuable in and of themselves. The purpose of health, for instance, is simply to be healthy. The value or “goodness” of health and knowledge do not disappear even if they are not used for anything in particular.

THE HIGHEST GOOD You may recall that we mentioned in this same context that, for many of the ancient Greeks, the only thing that was intrinsically good was happiness. Happiness was the “highest good” and, ultimately, all other goods, values, and human pursuits could be reduced to means or efforts to attain or maintain a “happy” existence. Indeed, Aristotle makes precisely this claim in the Nichomachean Ethics. His answer to the question of what we aim at in life is that we aim at happiness. This, for Aristotle, is the “highest good”—the good toward

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Chapter 10 • The Virtuous and the Vicious: Considering Character 195

which all other goods lead. Leading a “happy” existence, in fact, is the very purpose of human life—it is what we aim for in life, what we naturally strive to achieve, and what all of our other pursuits are ultimately about. If we think about why we do anything at all, our answers will eventually lead us to realize that everything we do is done to further our pursuit of happiness. Consider the following example:

Why do I wake up in the morning? I wake up in order to go to school.

Why do I go to school? I go to school in order to get a degree.

Why do I want a degree? I want a degree in order to get a job.

Why do I want a job? I want a job in order to make money.

Why do I want money? I want money in order to buy a house, food, etc.

Why do I want these things? I want these things so that I can have shelter, nourishment, etc.

Why do I want these things? Ultimately, I want these things because they allow me to pursue a “happy” existence.

Although your answers to the above questions may vary, Aristotle would argue that even- tually we are led to conclude that everything we do is ultimately done as a means for achieving the highest human good—a happy existence. All other goods are good only in that they allow us to pursue or maintain happiness, and all other values are valuable only in this same sense. Yet what exactly is “happiness”? How are we to achieve it? We will return to these concerns shortly. Before we judge Aristotle on this claim, however, we should understand that what Aristotle means by “happiness” and “happy existence” is a bit different from how we might use these terms in everyday conversation.