Criminal Justice: Stoicism Application
Introduction
Of all classic ethical theories, stoicism has gained the most popularity in recent years. In a world characterized by consent media outrage and endless streams of information, a philosophy propagating the lack of attention to the external circumstances of one’s life seems especially attractive to many people. The criminal justice system is especially affected by emotions and media. It exists on the interjection of ethics and legality, which may be difficult to balance. The critical review of the theory of stoicism will allow ascertaining how it can be applied to the field of criminal justice.
Critical Review
Stoicism revolves around the idea that the extent of one’s influence is limited. Regardless of the amount of power, knowledge, and skills at disposal, no person is capable of controlling nature and the multitude of other forces in the world. Instead of attempting to fight the external environment, stoics advocate for accepting the world in its current state. The complexity of factors affecting life is so high that no human effort can manage them all. Therefore, resisting against nature and actively trying to oppose it is a futile endeavor. The more a person attempts to control the external environment, the less they are likely to succeed.
An alternative manner of living life propagated by stoics is focusing on the few affairs that a person is actually able to control. Meanwhile, the factors that cannot be influenced should be regarded with indifference. Stoics present it as the most rational and appropriate way to distinguish important matters from irrelevant ones (Banks, 2019). In the modern media, it is extremely easy to fall into the trap of becoming emotionally invested in affairs that one cannot influence. People who start paying attention to such matters are psychologically drained to no avail. Stoics believe that it is better to remain indifferent to noise, thus saving energy for genuinely important issues.
The centrality of indifference to the external environment in the stoic philosophy also implies the importance of accepting the world and refraining from judging it. It is entirely possible to interpret the actions of other people as inappropriate and immoral. Yet, if certain events unfold in an unethical manner, stoics advise to accept this reality and live with it. It is a person’s current choices that define how virtuous or sinful they are, not the external world. Subsequently, stoicism guides people to serve the public and pursue virtues while striving to be free of passion and emotion.
It is important to note that the concept of indifference is frequently misinterpreted to mean a total lack of interest and apathy. Placing responsibility for every aspect of life on external forces is as harmful as excessive emotional investment in every event. Stoics argue for active decisions but only in those areas that can really be influenced (Banks, 2019). Indifference saves a person from worrying about issues that cannot be changed by one’s input. Ultimately, morality is always internal and found within each person. This viewpoint allows stoics to regard the chaotic nature of the world with calm.
Application to Ethical and Unethical Behavior
The criminal justice system is inherently connected with morality and judgment of human behavior. As an ethical theory, stoicism provides guidance to the way people ought to behave. Stoics firmly believe in the importance of virtues in every life. As a result, any person who violates the law should be held responsible, as stoicism also advocates for serving the public. According to stoicism, ethical behavior should be reasonable, rational, and within the framework of social rules. All deviations should also be addressed with restraint and a lack of emotions. Probably, the most important implication stoic implication is that ethical behavior should not be affected by emotions.
Naturally, the criminal justice system deals with issues that may be extremely emotional. After all, feelings are the reason behind a large number of crimes. The stoic interpretation is that it is people’s inability or unwillingness to control their emotions that leads to unethical behavior. The study by Reynolds and McCrea (2018) has explored how vulnerable and exposed UK criminal justice to media coverage is. Their most important finding was that the involvement of the press and the corresponding media outrage obfuscates the delivery of justice and prevents reintegration of offenders in society. When viewed through the lenses of the stoic philosophy, it becomes clear that the system brings damage to society and is unethical precisely because it allows emotional interpretations.
The stoic solution to making the criminal justice system more ethical is to remove emotions from decision-making. Actually, a similar approach is actively cultivated in the field of criminal justice. Sembiring et al. (2020) have studied the performance of criminal investigation officers and found that the best results were produced by those who exhibited greater signs of emotional intelligence. In essence, these officers were better at understanding what they were feeling and able to prevent their emotions from affecting their judgment. The resulting objective thinking driven entirely by rationality is exactly what stoicism presents as an example of the most ethical behavior.
The major disadvantage to stoics’ overview of ethical behavior is that it disregards the importance of human emotions. The belief in the prevalence of rationality at the expense of feelings frames emotions in an unfavorable light. At the same time, emotions help people spot harm and nuanced behavior, which might be legal immoral and legal simultaneously. The study by Sembiring et al. (2020) has also ascertained that the best criminal investigation officers worked in an environment with a caring climate. The researchers have ascertained the importance of emotional maturity, but not indifference. The practical implication is that officers should rely on feelings but not allow them to cloud their judgment.
Application to the Field of Criminal Justice
The most important tenet of stoicism that can benefit the criminal justice system is the acceptance of the external environment. Police officers, criminal investigators, and people working in correctional facilities have to constantly face illegal conduct and the apparent ineffectiveness of the system. According to Saari et al. (2020), the apparent futility in crime prevention is a common concern among police officers. Similar dissatisfaction is also noted by Sembiring et al. (2020), indicating that this concern is not nation-specific. Lawbreaking is one of the universal human phenomena observed throughout history in all regions. The subsequent feeling of helplessness in crime prevention is completely natural.
Stoicism can help officers by allowing them to recognize their emotional apprehension. The prevalence of crime worldwide is an example of an external factor that people cannot control. Regardless of how many criminals are convicted, there will always be those who continue breaking the law. An officer who embraces a stoic worldview will accept the fallibility of human nature and refrain from judging it. Counter-intuitively, the more people will focus on handling the cases virtuously while being indifferent to the overall crime data, the more effective the criminal justice system will likely be. The key is to accept one’s limitations and work with those instances of crime that can be addressed.
As a result, stoicism resolves the thought-provoking problem of the apparent futility of one’s actions. Not only would it boost the morale of people working in the criminal justice system, but its approach to emotional awareness would also increase their effectiveness. At the same time, officers should be wary of stoicism’s devaluing of emotions. After all, a person who is guided by rationality alone while being devoid of emotions can also bring harm to other people and society. Furthermore, it is also useful to pay attention to some aspects of the external environment, such as the lack of resources at the disposal of criminal investigators (Saari et al., 2020). Staying totally indifferent to such an issue would hurt the public, as it has a direct impact on the effectiveness of criminal justice.
Conclusion
Altogether, it should be evident that the application of stoicism to the field of criminal justice can indeed make it more ethical, although some of its ideas have to be regarded with skepticism. The main tenet of stoicism is indifference toward external factors, which cannot be influenced. This theory is useful because it guides people to work on those aspects that they are able to change while being unaffected by the chaotic nature of the world. Meanwhile, stoic total dismissal of feelings should also be regarded with caution, as emotions are important in making ethical decisions.
References
Banks, C. (2019). Criminal justice ethics: Theory and practice (5th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Reynolds, J. J., & McCrea, S. M. (2018). Criminal behavior and self-control: Using the dual component theory of inhibition regulation to advance self-control and crime research. Current Psychology, 37(4), 832-841. Web.
Saari, T., Ellonen, N., & Vuorensyrjä, M. (2020). Employee well-being of Finnish criminal investigators–mixed methods approach. International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior, 23(1), 85-99. Web.
Sembiring, N., Nimran, U., Astuti, E. S., & Utami, H. N. (2020). The effects of emotional intelligence and organizational justice on job satisfaction, caring climate, and criminal investigation officers’ performance. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 28(5), 1113-1130. Web.