2024-2025 Yavapai College Catalog 
    
    Oct 03, 2024  
2024-2025 Yavapai College Catalog

AJS 123 - Ethics and Criminal Justice


Description: Ethical issues, cultural influences and moral theories as they relate to the justice system. Focus on underlying values and ethical challenges faced by law enforcement, attorneys, the judiciary and correctional staff. Specific ethical scenarios common to the criminal justice system will be addressed. Emphasis on critical thinking and value decision making.

Prerequisites: Reading Proficiency

General Education Competency: Critical Thinking

Credits: 3
Lecture: 3
Lab: 0

Course Content:
  1. Morality, ethics and human behavior 
  2. Origins and concept of justice 
  3. Ethical decisions 
  4. Law and the individual 
  5. Ethics and criminal justice professionals 
  6. The police role in society: crime fighter or public servant 
  7. Ethics and legal professionals 
  8. Justice and judicial ethics 
  9. Ethics of punishment and corrections 
  10. Fundamentals of critical thinking 

Learning Outcomes:
  1. Define ethics, morality and values. (1)
  2. Describe the intersection of law, standards of morality, ethics and society. (1-3)
  3. Describe the core elements of justice, punishment and law. (2)
  4. Analyze the difference between distributive and retributive justice systems. (2)
  5. Identify ethical and justice theories and explain their historical origins. (3)
  6. Explain the purpose of codes and ethics. (4)
  7. Identify and explain key ethical issues confronting law enforcement. (5,6)
  8. Identify and explain the factors involved in the use of discretion. (7)
  9. Explain ethical considerations faced by members of the court. (8)
  10. Analyze ethical issues confronting correctional personnel. (9)
  11. Describe and model the fundamental concepts of critical thinking, including the barriers to critical thought and the recognition that closure is not always achieved in intellectual discourse. (10)