Police in America. Steven G. Brandl
6.
A Question of Ethics
Are Police Undercover Strategies Ethical?
To combat certain crimes, such as drug dealing and prostitution, the police may conduct undercover sting operations. Sometimes a sting is known as a buy-bust operation. A sting involves an investigator posing as someone who wishes to buy or sell some illicit goods, such as drugs or sex, or to conduct some other illicit transaction. When the terms of the deal are determined or the deal itself is done, police officers waiting nearby can execute an arrest. Although sometimes subject to claims of entrapment depending on the particulars of the operation, sting operations are legal. Nevertheless, they can be controversial. Fundamentally, this is because sting operations are based on police deceit, on lying, on police pretending to be someone they are not. Deception in this context is legal, but is it ethical? What do you think? Is it ethically okay for the police to use “dirty” means, to lie and deceive, in order to identify criminals and control crime? Under what circumstances is it ethically okay? When is it not ethically acceptable?
The problem is that only after the stop do the police determine that the vast majority of citizens are not involved in criminal behavior (see A Research Question feature). Another example of a controversial crime control tactic is when the police go undercover to identify offenders (see A Question of Ethics feature).
Simply stated, the difficulty for the police is that they are expected to control crime, but many of the tactics used to try to control crime are viewed as controversial, inappropriate, “dirty,” unethical, or just plain wrong. The continuing challenge is to discover crime control strategies that actually work but are not viewed as problematic.
The Difficulty of Crime Control
It is no easy task to control crime. The police have limited capabilities when it comes to controlling people’s behaviors, especially their criminal behaviors. As such, as we discussed in Chapter 1, it has been argued that the police have an impossible mandate.20 Some scholars have gone as far as to argue that “the presence or absence of crime has nothing to do with the police.”21
Photo 4.3 Crime control can be controversial, often because of the methods used. In particular, sting operations raise many legal and ethical issues.
Essdras M Suarez/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Police Lack Control Over Conditions of Crime
One reason why crime control is difficult, if not impossible, is that the police have no control or influence over the conditions associated with criminal behavior. They do not control the rate of employment, the amount of poverty, the nature of human interactions, or whether children grow up with proper role models. They do not control the psychological or biological makeup of human beings. They do not control the demographics of the population in which they police. They do not control the weather. They do not control the policies and practices of the other components of the criminal justice system. This knowledge may lead one to the reasonable conclusion that the police can have, at best, limited impact on criminal behavior.
Good Policing
The Need for New Measures of Police Effectiveness
Not only is it difficult for the police to control crime, it is also difficult to measure the control of crime. For example, consider this likely possibility: In a retirement community, there is very little crime. In a college town or in the part of a city where a college is located, there is usually a relatively high rate of crime, especially property crime. So is it accurate to conclude the police in the retirement community are more effective at controlling crime than the police in the college town, simply based on the amount of crime in those two areas? There are many factors that may account for the difference in crime levels in the two places—factors that have nothing to do with the police. Further, the role of the police is multi-dimensional, and measures of police effectiveness should reflect these responsibilities. Therefore, for example, it is necessary for police leaders to know if citizens are being treated fairly by the police when they request services or when they are stopped by an officer, whether members of the public perceive fairness from the police in their interactions with them, if police priorities are in line with those of the community, and if services are being provided in a cost-efficient manner.22 It is simply no longer enough to evaluate police performance in terms of crime and arrest tallies.
The Difficulties of Deterring Criminal Behavior
Another reason why crime control is difficult is that it is hard for the police to affect people’s behaviors. There are generally two approaches to controlling crime: incapacitation or deterrence. Incapacitation refers to making it impossible for people to commit crimes. For example, offenders who have been arrested and incarcerated are unable to commit additional crimes, at least outside of prison; they are incapacitated. In addition, if opportunities for criminal behavior are taken away, offenders may be incapacitated. For instance, if a would-be offender does not have a gun or access to a gun, that person is not going to be able to shoot someone, even if motivated to do so (although another weapon could be used). If a person is incapacitated in some way, he or she will not be able to commit a crime, or at least a specific type of crime. As such, the criminal behavior of that person will be controlled.
incapacitation: Making it impossible for people to commit crimes.
deterrence: Making someone decide not to do something.
While incapacitation as a way to control criminal behavior is relatively straightforward, crime control through deterrence is not. There are many important issues that need to be considered when thinking about the ability of the police to deter people from committing criminal behaviors. In order to deter behavior, to get someone to choose one behavior over another when both behaviors are an option, there have to be consequences for the undesired behavior. In the context of criminal behavior, the consequences usually come in the form of punishment. The first thing to note is the police usually do not control the punishment associated with a crime unless an arrest, a fine, or perhaps a use of force is considered the punishment. Moreover, in order for punishment to be an effective deterrent, it has to have at least three qualities. It has to be certain, meaning that the individual must believe that if the behavior is committed, punishment will follow. Punishment also has to be swift; it has to be administered quickly. Finally, punishment has to be individually meaningful. For example, a parking ticket of $50 might be individually meaningful to a person with a moderate income but not to a millionaire. Basically, in large measure the police are not able to control the certainty of punishment, the swiftness of punishment, or if the punishment is individually meaningful to the offender. The police are responsible for identifying and apprehending offenders but have relatively limited success in doing so (e.g., 46% of violent crimes and 17% of property crimes were solved in 2017). In this light, it is difficult to see how the police can deter people who are so inclined from committing crimes.
Further and even more fundamentally, another part of the difficulty in concluding whether or not—or to what degree—the police are able to deter people from committing crimes is defining exactly what is meant by deterrence and determining how it is measured. Is a man deterred from committing a bank robbery if he decides to commit it tomorrow instead of today? What if the would-be robber sees the police at a particular bank so he decides not to rob that bank but instead robs a different one down the block? Or decides to commit a bank robbery in a different city? What if instead of committing a robbery, he commits a burglary? Think about this issue in terms of the police trying to deter speeders. When you are driving down the street and see a patrol car, chances are you slow down. And then, just maybe, after you see that the officer is not behind you with lights and siren,