I’m working on a criminal justice multi-part question and need a sample draft to help me learn.
1. You are a prosecuting attorney with a strong relationship to the police force you partner with. An officer comes to you with a dilemma: his partner is about to testify about a robbery he was the arresting officer on, but he knows the partner’s memory is shaky because he was going through a divorce at the time. The officer swears you to secrecy. How will you prevent the officer’s partner from perjuring himself without breaking the trust of his partner?
2. Analyze the ethical challenges that arise from going undercover?
3. Corruption can be inspired by the institution itself. You are a patrol officer in a city in the on the west coast, where the middle managers have adopted a results-oriented policing policy based on Compstat. You have been on the force for several years, and are starting to notice strange behavior: witnesses are being asked to recount testimony, interrogations are being coerced, sometimes violently, domestic violence is being underreported. Describe what form the pressures against reporting your fellow officers will take, and how you will approach the situation in an ethically sound manner?
4. One of the most difficult things for anyone to do is admit they were wrong. The stakes are especially high for prosecutors, who risk wrongfully imprisoning or even seeking the death penalty for innocent people. You are a prosecutor with a busy caseload, and it has come to your attention that a police department, which you work closely with has recently been involved in a bribery and coercion scandal involving a local gang. Witnesses, without your knowledge, were paid to testify, and sometimes physically threatened to stay silent. A handful of cases you prosecuted have been overturned already, but you know of dozens more. Some of the convicted might be innocent; some are definitely guilty. You are not in a state that has a provision for Model Rules explicit to prosecutors. What do you feel is your ethical and moral responsibility to this situation? Explain in detail.
5. Explain how the social contract is the source of police power and explain the elements or characteristics of policing that logically flow from such power.