Ethical Issues In Criminal Justice

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The basics of ethics are being right or wrong. This differs amongst cultures, races and religions. When conducting research on a particular society, researchers should be aware of what the society considers to be ethical and unethical (Maxfield & Babbie, 2011, p. 54). Several ethical issues in criminal justice can be very challenging because of the topics that are being studied such as drugs, racial profiling, human trafficking, gang involvement and several other illegal activities. Criminal justice research has also caused ethical issues with participants involved in the studies. The ethical issues include: voluntary participation, deceiving participants, legal liability, anonymity and confidentiality.
Voluntary participation has been an
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1). Confidentiality means only the research team will be able to identify the subjects based on any information collected and this information will not be released to the public (“Protecting confidentiality & anonymity, sect. 3). According to Maxfield and Babbie (2011), “whenever a survey is confidential rather than anonymous, it is the researcher’s responsibility to make that fact clear to respondents” and the researcher must never use the term anonymous to mean confidential (p.60). If researchers wanted to review arrest records of juveniles, the names of the participants would have to be known in order to receive the information needed on specific populations. In 2014, by Kondo, Johnson, Ironside, Brems, Eldridge study of HIV/AIDS research in correctional settings showed that autonomy, informed consent, confidentiality caused ethical issues because of the researchers and the nature of the correctional institutions (p.2). Legal liability has an ethical issue in crime and justice for participants as well because disclosure of research data that could be traced to individual subjects violates the ethical principle of confidentiality ( Maxfield & Babbie, …show more content…
The Nazi Medical War Crimes during 1939–1945, caused physical harm to the participants. During this study, physicians performed medical experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners, where the prisoners were tortured by being injected with gasoline, live viruses and being immersed in ice water (National Institute of Health, 2011). The Nuremberg Military Tribunals, found that the 20 physicians and 3 administrators had corrupted the ethics od medical and scientific professions and violated the rights of the participants (National Institute of Health, 2011). The potential for psychological harm to participants has also been an issue when conducting research in criminal justice. This has been seen in participants who have been victims of domestic violence and illegal behaviors. When research surveys ask subjects to recall incidents that happened to them, it could be traumatic and cause embarrassment (Maxfield & Babbie, 2011, p. 55). Subjects can also experience stress or anxiety when they read the books published about the studies they participated in and being able to locate themselves in the indexes and tables of the published material (Maxfield & Babbie, 2011, p. 55). Psychological harm was also seen in the Stanford Prison Experiment, were 21 subjects were tested to observe how prisoners and guards reacted to their roles (Maxfield & Babbie, 2011). The study was

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