Ethics, Corruption and Accountability (PD306)
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I am the Instructor for Ethics, Corruption and Accountability (PD306) at Wilfrid Laurier University
This 3rd year undergraduate course forms part of the BA Policing degree programme.
Course Overview
This course explores contemporary issues of ethics, corruption and accountability for law enforcement personnel. Specifically, this course also explores how police institutions, the media, the public and overseeing bodies respond to allegations of unethical or improper conduct by law enforcement. Students apply relevant criminological theories to understand well-known cases of police corruption, racial profiling, noble cause policing and use of excessive force. Students will understand how the powers afforded to police may be used to both uphold and undermine legitimate police practices.
Key Learnings
This senior level course examines the ethical perspective of policing, providing a grounding in the relevant theories of ethics, and building upon those theories and practical experience the student brings, to critically analyze situations and develop mechanisms to support ethical behaviour and build community confidence in police organizations.
By the end of this course students should be able to:
Distinguish between the various ethical theories and draw correlations as to how they
can be applied in ethical decision-making in police organizations;
Articulate the importance of positive police-community relations and theorize about how
police misconduct and deviance impairs public trust and perceived legitimacy of police
institutions;
Apply an intersectional approach to understanding how police misconduct influences
citizens’ perceptions of police;
Recommend institutional guidelines to prevent police misconduct at the supervisory, middle-level, and frontline officer ranks;
Recognize how opportunities for police misconduct, corruption, and deviance are created within the working environment and subculture of police officers;
Critically evaluate the efficacy of Early Warning Systems (EWS), Internal Affairs (IA), and the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) as responses to police misconduct; and
Adopt leadership strategies to assess and manage identifiable forms of police misconduct.