Ethics and Criminal Justice

John Kleinig is Director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics and Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Law and Police Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and he holds the Charles Sturt University Chair of Policing Ethics in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Australian National University.

• 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.

'… an outstanding exploration of the tensions that arise between the demands of ordinary morality and the special duties that govern the behavior of various practitioners in criminal justice in virtue of their institutional roles. … I recommend it to non-specialists who hope to be brought up to speed on a set of issues with which they are unfamiliar. Academics and non-academics alike can profit greatly by thinking about the myriad topics examined by Kleinig. … Many fine introductions to criminal justice are available, but no competing book rivals Ethics and Criminal Justice in the depth of philosophical sophistication it devotes exclusively to the ethical issues that govern the behavior of criminal justice practitioners. Kleinig demonstrates what can happen when an excellent philosopher turns his attention to the real world of criminal justice.' Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews