Honesty and Justice in the Criminal Justice System Essay

Honesty and Justice are words that describe integrity and character of an individual. â€Å"The word Honesty, by its virtue, describes an individual or an entity that doesn’t lie, cheat, steal, or abuse to get ahead for personal or professional gain† (http://www.freeessays123.com/essay24727/honesty-versus-justice-and-due-process-versus-crime-control.html ). When an individual is honest, they stand for what is right and look for a positive outcome. â€Å"Justice is the entity that we depend on as a country and a community, to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, legal and illegal† (http://www.freeessays123.com/essay24727/honesty-versus-justice-and-due-process-versus-crime-control.html). Justice is what we depend on to keep us safe from harm to live a better life. In the criminal justice system, there are many ethical issues involved in honesty and justice. Sometimes justice isn’t so honest and individuals make certain decisions that are not e thical, which causes issues and problems for many people. For example, lawyers lie or stretch the truth many times to plea their defendants’ cases by redirecting the focus point on what the prosecution is trying to prove. The reason for the lawyer lying is not to hurt someone else, rather to try to help their defendant not go to jail. I do not agree that this is right because I believe the defendant should pay for the crime they committed. This is where justice and ethics should be presented for the plaintiff. This can be defined as â€Å"pursuing the client’s rights, but not the client’s interests, if those interests are incompatible with the â€Å"truth† (https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/appaction=DocumentDispla  y&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=27+Hofstra+L.+Rev.+13&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=194a3f1cb6096596bc374c883c6c206c). â€Å"Integrity and Honesty Integrity can be defined as â€Å"an uncompromising adherence to a code of moral, artistic or other values, utter sincerity, honesty and candor, avoidance of deception, expediency, artificiality or shallowness of any kind† ( http://www.cheathouse.com/essay/importance-integrity-and-honesty-criminal-justice-field#ixzz0jcuzLMOj). This basically means to do what is right at all times regardless of who is watching. We cannot assure that all individuals in the legal system will use integrity and moral values when doing their jobs, but our legal system educates and trains these people to base their work ethics on this type of system. I believe that every case is different and we cannot assure that honesty is maintained and still do justice. For example, every police officer is different and you have those that lie to help catch criminals and those bad cops that lie and use their authority in a negative manner. There will be police officers who go undercover and sell drugs to catch big time drug dealers, and therefore this type of lying is positive because it is for the good of our streets. It is best to be in the situation up close and personal because you can see how the offenders operate and it is easier to catch them. Then you have those officers who use their authority is a negative manner and they do not use ethics in the decisions they make. These kinds of cops are the reason as to why all police officers do not have the best name. It is hard to trust all of them, when they are supposed to be the people who are to protect us. I do not think that justice can be accomplished while maintaining honesty because you must think like a criminal in order to catch a criminal. Criminals will think of every way to commit a crime and get away with it, so the police must be on top of this state of mind to be able to build a case and apprehend these criminals. Coming up with effective strategies to fight crime has always been a debate.