The Ethical Issues Faced by Criminal Justice Professionals

1.          To maintain law and order Sargent Baldwin and his team ensure prison is on lock down always 24 hours a day for days; this is to reduce the interaction between inmates which can lead to violence or any other gang related issue such as fights. They ensure that prisoners also have contact with the outside world this is because when prisoners have hope from the outside, they tend to be less violent. There is also the restriction of the number of movements to twenty persons at a time in the round house exercise yard during the time for breathing fresh air, this is because if a greater number of inmates are allowed it could result to chaos. In extreme cases they will have to use of weapons to stop fights and firing shots, more to this they use of overwhelming force, sends warning to the other inmates when they want to start trouble

2.       The case Dibble Terry. He was transferred to state field prison from down state prison because he fought with another inmate there. Terry has already served ten years for murdering an acquaintance and on the same day murdered another man who had affair with his girlfriend. He copes by the use of tattoos acknowledging the events that brought him to prison, his tattoos include a ribbon which he says symbolizes his responsibility in ruining other peoples lives, it depicts the crying of three mothers(the mothers to the two people he murdered and his own mum because being locked into prison is more like dying) and it also symbolizes the death of three men, the two he killed and him too. He also looks to the outside world not to lose hope; for the last six months has gone by he has been in relationship and this gives him a reason to hope for a brighter future despite the situation he is in.

3.                  As was stated by sergeant Baldwin, the use of overwhelming force tends to send warning to the inmates who want to cause trouble, armed guard also give security to the vulnerable inmates like gays so that they may not be taken advantage of. The armed guards also provide security for the prison staff since they are susceptible to violence from the rowdy prisoners. In extreme cases, when the staff feels their lives are in danger at the hands of the inmates they are allowed to shoot at the inmates.

4.          Sargent Baldwin said that when you deny the prisoners the contact with the outside world, they tend to be very violent. Isolation in Statesville is for inmates who are violent, but in most cases the prison allows the touch of an inmate with the outside world helps in reducing the emotional tension as well as psychological relaxation to them, they tend to be less violent in this case.

5.           As was explained by Jericho who is a gay in the prison, most times gay inmates face beating from other inmates who are against gays, sometimes they are just beaten for no reason but for just being gay. They are also discriminated by inmates, for example a roommate can refuse to stay with a gay inmate in the same room as was shown by the case of Gregory Crowder, where a new inmate refused to be in the same room with him because he was gay.

Gay inmates are also susceptible to sexual violation by other inmates and the guards who are sexual predators. The case of Gregory Crowder who was

6.           The prison, although it seems to have proper facility in place, has to have some improvement in order to ensure the safety and comfort of the inmates. Some of the changes that need to be done, is the provision of condoms for sexually active inmates (Medina, 2018). According to statistics, one percent of the inmates at the prison are HIV positive, a percentage bigger than the one in in public, and if no sexual protection is used for the gay sexually active inmates, it can lead to the spread of the disease hence causing new infections.

             Because it is evident that there is innovation of inmates in making weapons from the materials in their cell, these weapons are later used to hurt other inmates or passing items to one another. To curb this the prison should build its facilities in such a way that fragments are hard to be to be broken off and used as weapon.

The ethical issues faced by criminal justice professionals and the future of the criminal justice system include

Impartial action

                 This is a requirement for an officer to act impartially. This ethical issue can be a problem to uphold in some of the real-world situations. An example is if an officer knows where drug lord operates from but cannot take action without court order or search warrants.

Necessary force

                The police are not supposed to use any unnecessary force, but there have been cases such as the Black lives matter movement, which depicted police using brutal force against citizens. For doing this they should be prosecuted

Personal Rights and upholding the law

             Sometimes the police find themselves cornered when they are in situation where they have to uphold the law but also defend their rights, example is when a n officer is under attack, it puts the officer in a difficult situation.

           Prisons are institution or facilities in which prisoners are held and denied variety of freedom as a result of the crime one commits. The purpose of the prison may differ but the ones commonly known for are for correction of behaviors (McConville, 2017) and others are used for the political oppression example a leader might want to imprison his opposes. Some known characteristics of prisons are:

            Security levels where inmates are placed in different levels depending on their criminal history, most federal prisons have five different levels while state levels have three levels: maximum, medium and minimum.

            In all these levels prisons have the right to be protected from harm and danger (Jackson, 2017) among other rights that other law-abiding citizens have, the only limitation is on their freedom to interact with people for the period they are serving as a consequence of their crime.

References

Jackson, B. A., Banks, D., Woods, D., Dawson, J. C., & RAND. (2017).

Justice: Building a Research Agenda to Address the Effects of Technological Change on the Future-Proofing Protection of Constitutional Rights. RAND.

McConville, M., Sanders, A., & Leng, R. (2017). Routledge Revivals: Case for the Prosecution

            (1991): Police Suspects and the Construction of Criminality. Routledge.

Medina, K., & Nguyen, B. (2018). Acknowledged but Ignored: A Critical Race Theory

Approach to the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Queer Cats Journal of LGBTQ Studies, 2(1).