SDSU Christian Values & Leadership in The Criminal Justice System Essay

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San Diego State University

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Write an essay of 750 to 1,000 words addressing the following:

  1. How can Christian leadership in the criminal justice system assist in the administration of incarcerated persons?
  2. Discuss whether an adherence to Christian values and beliefs can help promote adherence to the Standards of Employee Conduct and the Federal Bureau of Prisons policies in general. (comp. 1.1)

**Utilize three to five relevant, scholarly sources in support of your content. Use https://library.gcu.edu/ or google scholar. Attached are some sources you can use

**Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. This guide is located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required. (APA Style Guide is attached)

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion. (I will send the rubric)

Benchmark Information

This benchmark assignment assesses the following programmatic competencies and professional standards:

MS in Criminal Justice with an Emphasis in Law Enforcement

MS in Criminal Justice with an Emphasis in Legal Studies

1.1: Analyze how principles of Christian leadership can promote adherence to ethical codes of conduct. (MC3).

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Eric D. Raile Montana State University Building Ethical Capital: Perceptions of Ethical Climate in the Public Sector This article examines influences on public servant perceptions of ethical climate in the public sector. The array of beneficial outcomes produced by perceptions of a positive ethical climate, the existence of government programs aimed at improving ethical climate, and implications for government accountability and trustworthiness all argue for a better understanding of the sources of these perceptions. Empirical analyses of survey responses from employees of the U.S. federal executive branch show that individuals in leadership positions perceive the ethical climate more positively. Conversely, work tenure tends to worsen perceived ethical climate, although supervisory status attenuates this negative effect. Ethics training, interaction with ethics officials, and perceived knowledge about ethics topics consistently influence perceptions of ethical climate and advice-seeking behavior in a positive way. A set of results related to advice-seeking behavior serves to reinforce the important role of ethics officials. ethical climate in the public sector. The more specific task is to advance the “fragmented” and “underresearched” literature (Martin and Cullen 2006, 179) on the origins of perceptions of ethical climate. Doing so helps answer one of Cooper’s four big questions for public administration ethics: “How can organizations be designed to be supportive of ethical conduct?” (2004, 404). This project also tests assumptions that undergird international anticorruption agreements and government ethics programs. Eric D. Raile is assistant visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at Montana State University–Bozeman. His research agenda on government accountability includes examination of topics such as public ethics, mechanisms for preventing corruption, institutional sources of corruption, and public perceptions of corruption. His work has been presented to multilateral organizations such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the World Bank. E-mail: eric.raile@montana.edu The next section provides a review and theoretical discussion of the ethical climate concept. A brief discussion of international anticorruption agreements and government ethics programs follows. After specifying hypotheses and discussing the data and methods, the article presents the results of empirical analyses and discusses implications for governance. T Overall, the results of the analyses show that percephe extent to which a democratic government tions of ethical climate in the public sector are a meets the goals of serving the citizenry and function of an employee’s place within and history improving the general welfare depends in with the organization, perceived knowledge about part on the attitudes and behaviors of public employethics, perceptions and characteristics of ethics trainees. Considerable research in the business literature ing, and perceptions and behavior related to seeking and more limited research in public administration formal advice about ethics matters. Importantly, these has detailed how perceptions of a positive “ethical results suggest that public servant perceptions of ethiclimate” influence other attitudes and behaviors in a cal climate have predictable sources and, as a consepositive way. Perceptions of a positive ethical climate quence, public administrators can help shape those create an intangible reservoir that facilitates a variety perceptions. of productive interactions and outcomes. In this way, these perceptions function similarly to “social capital” (Portes 1998; Putnam 2000), which is a nonmonetary Ethical Climate The distinction between organizational “culture” form of capital that stems from the way “involveand “climate” remains subject to some ambiguity, ment and participation in groups can have positive but certain fundamental differences emerge in the consequences for the individual and the community” literature (see Denison 1996). Researchers tend to (Portes 1998, 2). In this case “ethical capital” accrues, discuss organizational cultures at least in part, from more as fairly stable, values-based, positive perceptions of ethical This project aims to address organization-specific outcomes climate on the part of public the general paucity of research of symbolic interaction between servants. individuals and environments, on ethical climate in the public This project aims to address the while organizational or “work” sector. general paucity of research on climates are more temporary, Public Administration Review, Vol. 73, Iss. 2, pp. 253–262. © 2012 by The American Society for Public Administration. DOI: 10.111/j.1540-6210.2012.02649.x. Building Ethical Capital: Perceptions of Ethical Climate in the Public Sector 253 better defined, easier to measure, and more controllable (Denison 1996; Eisenberg and Riley 2001; Reichers and Schneider 1990). According to some theorists, climate is a feature of individual– organization dyads that is rather generalizable across organizations (see discussion in Denison 1996). Further, climate must relate to particular content, thereby improving precision and enhancing predictability, and must involve collective or global perceptions about the organizational environment (Kozlowski and Klein 2000; Poole 1985; Schneider and Reichers 1983; Vashdi, Vigoda-Gadot, and Shlomi 2012). Each climate, then, might represent a specific “dimension” of the organizational culture (Denison 1996). Because climate is inherently a group-level phenomenon, individual-level measures are more properly termed “psychological climate” or “perceptions” of climate (James and Jones 1974; Parker et al. 2003). These perceptions may deviate from the formal policies of an organization meant to address a particular workplace dimension, but the perceptions remain important, as they influence many other individual and organizational phenomena. Ethical climate is one specific type of work climate. The construct of “ethical climate” or “ethical work climate” has taken a few related forms in the literature. The common threads running through these definitions are the notions (1) that ethical climate involves shared perceptions of group norms related to organizational policies, procedures, and practices and (2) that these norms deal with distinctions between right and wrong behavior (i.e., ethics) within the organization (see Martin and Cullen 2006; Victor and Cullen 1988). Considerable research on the private sector has detailed how ethical climate and perceived ethical climate contribute to a variety of important organizational and individual outcomes (see summaries in Martin and Cullen 2006; O’Fallon and Butterfield 2005). Such outcomes include ethical decision making and behavior (e.g., Martin and Cullen 2006; Peterson 2002; Treviño, Butterfield, and McCabe 1998; Vardi 2001; Weber, Kurke, and Pentico 2003) and organizational success in responding to ethical issues (Bartels et al. 1998). Yet other work has linked perceptions of ethical climate to attitudes such as organizational commitment and job satisfaction (see Martin and Cullen 2006), to psychological contracts (Barnett and Schubert 2002), and to moral awareness (VanSandt, Shepard, and Zappe 2006). The results of more limited research on public organizations largely fit with these private sector findings. For example, employee behavior that reflects the use of an organization’s ethics code is based on a perception that others use the code (Ashkanasy, Falkus, and Callan 2000); this perception would be an element of perceived ethical climate. A stronger ethical climate can also lessen managers’ perceptions of wrongdoing in the organization (e.g., Menzel 1995), while ethics “stress” (i.e., the mismatch between individual ethics beliefs and perceptions of prevailing ethical norms) is associated with lower job satisfaction and greater perceptions that employee turnover is a problem (Menzel 1996). Recent work also suggests that the influence of climate perceptions on the performance of public organizations may be mediated by perceptions of organizational politics (Vashdi, Vigoda-Gadot, and Shlomi 2012). The findings of the few studies that directly compare the public and private sectors suggest that public managers tend to be less positive 254 Public Administration Review • March | April 2013 about the ethical climates of their organizations (Wittmer and Coursey 1996) and tend to see their organizations as more “political” (Vigoda-Gadot and Kapun 2005) when researchers do the comparing. However, one also must entertain the possibility that ethical sensitivity is greater in the public sector. Public managers almost unanimously reject the direct claim that government morality is lower than business morality in the United States (Bowman 1990; Bowman and Knox 2008). Some researchers have examined factors that contribute to differing types or individual perceptions of ethical climate. Among the relevant factors observed for the private sector are external organization context, organizational form, and managerial orientations (see Martin and Cullen 2006). The latter includes features such as the moral development of leaders (Schminke, Ambrose, and Neubaum 2005) and supervisor encouragement of ethical behavior (Miller et al. 2005). Based on public sector survey responses, a recent study makes some mention of ethics training and counseling and the existence and use of an ethics code as contributing to a more positive ethical climate (Bowman and Knox 2008). Though more must be done to establish linkages directly, research also suggests that improved perceptions of ethical climate among public sector employees might improve mass views of governance. Improved mass views might result from better government performance and/or more positive discussions of government ethics in social networks. Consequently, if public servant perceptions of ethical climate have predictable sources, administrators might also have the means to indirectly improve mass views of governance. Though evidence of a direct link between broader government performance and mass trust is weak (see Dalton 2005; Norris 2011; Van de Walle and Bouckaert 2003; Van Ryzin 2011; Yang and Holzer 2006), some authors have pointed toward citizen use of less burdensome heuristics in evaluating government (e.g., James 2011; Thomas 1998). For example, citizens might more easily assess certain elements of the government process (Van Ryzin 2011), including procedural justice (Yang and Holzer 2006) and fairness and honesty in administration (Kim 2005; Van Ryzin 2011). In sum, specific elements of government performance such as ethical behavior (itself affected by perceptions of ethical climate) may influence mass trust in government. A second potential route fits with the recommendation that researchers examine the role of government employees in shaping public attitudes (Kim 2005). Public servants have lives and social networks outside the workplace, and these external connections or “citizen–citizen interactions” (Van de Walle and Bouckaert 2003) should affect how members of the general public evaluate the bureaucracy. Public servants are likely viewed as highly credible sources when discussing their perceptions of public administration, and source credibility is central to message persuasiveness (Lupia and McCubbins 1998). Government Programs The previously cited research supports the common wisdom that ethical climate affects a range of attitudes and behaviors critical for effective governance, including ethical decision making. The outward manifestations of a positive ethical climate may also enhance Employee Characteristics the reputation and credibility of government, The outward manifestations of Previous research has shown that an employa significant asset in itself. Consequently, govee’s place in the organizational structure or ernments have adopted programs geared, at a positive ethical climate may least in part, toward producing more positive also enhance the reputation and hierarchy matters for ethics perceptions. One potential explanation is that self-perception ethical climates, including ethics training and credibility of government, a biases combine with the climate-establishing counseling programs. Many state and local significant asset in itself. role of leaders to produce these differing government ethics organizations in the United perceptions. Individuals tend to assume that States have strengthened and expanded their they are more ethical than others (Bazerman and Tenbrunsel 2011; programs for ethics training (see Bowman and Knox 2008) and Bowman and Knox 2008), especially compared to individuals or counseling in recent years. Such expansions have been part of a broader push to help employees avoid problems and to prevent mis- suborganizations perceived as more “distant” (Fredrickson and Fredrickson 1995; Menzel 1995). Additionally, individuals in leadconduct. Yet governments have made assumptions about program ership positions play a greater role in influencing the ethical climate effectiveness, as very little systematic empirical evidence exists. in that they set the ethical “tone,” serve as visible models for behavior, and establish formal ethics program elements for the organizaInternational anticorruption agreements also have encouraged such tion (Beeri et al., 2012; Treviño 1990; Treviño, Weaver, and Brown training and counseling programs. Appendix A lists relevant provi2008). Consequently, individuals in higher positions may believe sions of international anticorruption agreements and other multithat their self-assessed superior ethics permeate to the rest of the lateral documents. Peer review mechanisms to promote fulfillment organization. More positive views of ethical climate may also result of agreement obligations have provided further impetus for training from managers’ need to protect the organization’s image and their programs. For example, the mechanism for the Inter-American own identity (Treviño, Weaver, and Brown 2008) or from managConvention against Corruption has made standard training recommendations in each review round and has emphasized the usefulness ers better noticing relevant information based on higher discretion and beliefs about efficacy (see Sutcliffe 2001). Conversely, percepof counseling in preventing corruption. tions of the rank and file may be more negative because they view higher-ups as less ethical than themselves, though particular disdain The U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) is responsible for is reserved for elected officials and political appointees (Bowman helping executive branch employees of the national-level governand Knox 2008; Menzel 1995). Studies looking directly at the issue ment avoid conflicts of interest. Although individual agencies may develop certain supplemental standards, OGE provides branch-wide of managerial status and perceptions of ethical climate in the private direction with a detailed set of regulations (5 C.F.R. Part 2635) that sector find more positive perceptions among managers (Treviño, establishes the standards of ethical conduct. OGE also provides edu- Weaver, and Brown 2008; Vardi 2001). cation and training and counseling resources to ethics officials, who Also relevant here are concepts such as “alienation” and “anomie,” are then primarily responsible for disseminating such information which deal with powerlessness, meaninglessness, and perceived within their particular agencies. For example, OGE requires that all normlessness (Seeman 1983). Substantial literatures have linked new employees in the executive branch receive an ethics orientation “locus of control” (Spector et al. 2002) or “self-efficacy” (Bandura and that certain categories of employees receive annual ethics training (see 5 C.F.R. Part 2638, Subpart G). As such, OGE is one of the 1982) to an array of attitudes in the workplace. The basic idea is that an individual who believes that he or she has some control over main organizations in the United States fulfilling the provisions of what happens is likely to have a more positive set of attitudes and a the international agreements just discussed. more effective set of coping strategies. Additionally, the normlessness of anomie (Cohen 1993) can be the result of an individual’s Why would ethics training and counseling not improve perceptions inability to see norms or a lack of attention to information about of ethical climate? One might ask the same about ethical codes of norms. Lower-level employees have reason to believe that they have conduct. However, research on the helpfulness of codes has suplesser control over the workplace; they may plied mixed results (see Ashkanasy, Falkus, also perceive greater normlessness because of and Callan 2000; James 2000), although Emphasis on ethical rules can communication and information patterns. public employees have increasingly seen be viewed as condescension codes as effective (Bowman and Knox 2008). or hypocrisy, particularly if Hypothesis 1: Public servants in leaderEmphasis on ethical rules can be viewed as ship positions will have more positive condescension or hypocrisy, particularly if employees believe that superviperceptions of ethical climate than those in employees believe that supervisors act unethisors act unethically. nonleadership positions. cally. Given the assumed importance of such programs and the public funds being spent on The length of time one has worked in government may also influthem, subjecting the claims to systematic empirical analysis seems ence perceptions of ethical climate. Previous research has produced prudent. mixed results. While perceptions of a “caring” ethical climate improve with an individual’s work tenure (Victor and Cullen Influences on Perceptions of Ethical Climate 1988), another study finds a linkage between age and cynicism The following hypotheses address perceptions of ethical climate in about ethical climate among college students (Luthar, DiBattista, executive branch organizations. The individual-level hypotheses fall and Gautschi 1997). Longer-tenured employees may be able to cite under two headings: (1) employee characteristics and (2) informaa greater number of perceived ethical lapses in the organization. tion transfer, communication, and knowledge. Building Ethical Capital: Perceptions of Ethical Climate in the Public Sector 255 Self-perception biases may also lead the longer-tenured individual to believe that he or she has run across a greater number of less ethical people in the organization. Hypothesis 2: Longer-tenured public servants will have more negative perceptions of ethical climate than shorter-tenured public servants. Further analysis will help differentiate among the potential explanations for the leadership and work tenure relationships with perceived ethical climate. In particular, supervisory status and work tenure taken separately do not fully capture the potential effects of alienation and resentment on employee perceptions. The employees most likely to experience these effects are longer-term employees who have not risen to supervisory status. Hypothesis 3: Nonsupervisory status of a public servant will increase any negative impact of work tenure on perception of ethical climate. Information Transfer, Communication, and Knowledge Researchers often hold up ethics training programs as means of improving ethical conduct in an organization, sometimes indirectly by improving perceptions of ethical climate (LeClair and Ferrell 2000; Valentine and Fleischman 2004). Training offers opportunities to reinforce a positive climate and to provide evidence of leadership commitment. Also important for climate outcomes is the general belief that training works; more than 80 percent of public employees surveyed believe that formal ethics training improves compliance with ethical standards (Bowman and Knox 2008). Studies that have directly examined the relationship between formal training programs and perceptions of ethical climate have found positive linkages in the private sector (Frisque and Kolb 2008; Valentine and Fleischman 2004) and in municipal governments (West and Berman 2004). Training should also contribute to actual and perceived knowledge about ethics issues. This knowledge, in turn, should enable an individual to better understand ethical issues and to see positive markers of the climate. Hypothesis 4: (a) Greater training frequency, (b) greater breadth of training topics, and (c) use of more training methods will improve perceptions of ethical climate among public servants. Hypothesis 5: Greater perceived training effectiveness will improve perceptions of ethical climate among public servants. Hypothesis 6: Public servants with greater self-assessed familiarity with ethics training topics will have more positive perceptions of ethical climate. One-on-one counseling with ethics officials provides yet another route for the positive reinforcement of climate, for supplying evidence of ethical leadership, and for transmitting knowledge. Being aware that ethics officials exist is an important indicator of general cognizance of the ethics program. For those public servants who then seek advice from ethics officials, the perceived quality of the interaction should further influence perceptions of ethical climate. These interactions serve as examples of the ethical climate for the public servant. 256 Public Administration Review • March | April 2013 Hypothesis 7: Public servants (a) who are aware of the existence of ethics officials and (b) who have sought advice from an ethics official will have more positive perceptions of ethical climate. Hypothesis 8: Public servants who (a) perceive ethics officials as more helpful and (b) perceive advice from ethics officials as more useful will have more positive perceptions of ethical climate. One empirical specification also includes an equation in which having sought the advice of an agency ethics official serves as a dependent variable. This specification is the result of an anticipated reciprocal relationship with perception of ethical climate, as individuals should feel compelled to ask (or at least feel comfortable asking) for formal advice about ethical dilemmas if they see a strong ethical climate. Given space limitations and the secondary nature of this analysis, what follows are brief, informal hypotheses with causal reasoning similar to that already presented. Employees in more complex or visible positions should be more likely to seek advice, partly as a result of having greater need for it. Greater perceived knowledge about ethics topics and greater exposure to training should also have positive impacts on advice-seeking behavior; the U.S. executive branch has designed its ethics training program to prompt employees to seek advice, and individuals with greater perceived knowledge should be more alert to potential ethics problems. Organizational Factors Data on other organizational characteristics are not available, but a group indicator variable allows for limited exploration of organization-level effects, a deficient area of the literature (Martin and Cullen 2006). The data do not permit controlling for actual organizational ethics practices, but the extensive standardization of the executive branch ethics program provides something of a natural control. The grouping variable allows examination of whether group-level perceptions and behaviors from the foregoing hypotheses affect individual perceptions of ethical climate. Individuals might observe these aggregate patterns and use them in evaluating the overall ethical climate in the organization. Hypothesis 9: More positive group perceptions and behaviors related to (a) training, (b) knowledge, and (c) advice-seeking will make individual-level perceptions of ethical climate more positive. Data and Methods The data come from surveys completed by 17,248 employees at 16 different organizations in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government.1 Survey administrators distributed surveys to all unique individual e-mail addresses at the chosen organizations and followed up with two reminder e-mails to individuals who had not responded by particular dates. Respondents completed the surveys between November 2003 and July 2005, with an aggregate response rate of 33 percent of all public servants across the 16 organizations. This response rate appears to be low for a survey gathering individuallevel data in the United States (see Baruch and Holtom 2008). The primary concern with a low response rate here is possible nonresponse bias (i.e., systematic reasons for nonresponse related to the variables of interest) because it can lead to biased point estimates (e.g., sample means) and inflated standard errors. Statistics reported by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (2004) suggest that the sample is slightly heavier on supervisors but is otherwise similar to the executive branch population. Inclusion of the supervisor variable on the right-hand side of equations will prevent any potential problem with biased coefficients. Additionally, the analyses in the current study utilize inferential rather than descriptive statistics, and the sample size is large enough to overcome concerns about inflated standard errors. The primary dependent variable used in these analyses is perception of ethical climate. The measure is a summated rating scale (see Jacoby 1991; Spector 1992) of positive/negative evaluations of various elements of an organization’s ethical climate.2 The 10 items here are very similar to standard items used in business ethics research (see esp. Treviño, Butterfield, and McCabe 1998; Treviño and Weaver 2001; Treviño, Weaver, and Brown 2008; Treviño et al. 1999), but tweaking of some items improved fit with public organizations. The slight changes in item wording here relate primarily to elimination or replacement of terms such as “company,” “management,” and “firm” that are more closely associated with the private sector. The items have been in use for well over a decade (Treviño, Butterfield, and McCabe 1998) and have been subjected to extensive validity and reliability analyses.3 The particular scale items used in this study appear in table 1. The narrower set of items employed here seems useful for a population of respondents who find themselves situated within a dominant type of ethical climate, as compared to measurement with a categorization tool such as the Ethical Climate Questionnaire (Victor and Cullen 1988). The highly detailed and regimented nature of the executive branch ethics programs seems to place it relatively cleanly into the “Law & Code” and “Rules” types of ethical climates identified in the Ethical Climate Questionnaire typology. Descriptions of the other variables used in operationalizing hypotheses appear in appendix B. The supervisory and pay plan variables are operationalizations of whether the respondent is in a leadership position, while the work tenure variable operationalizes time in government. A number of variables capture different characteristics of the training program, including training frequency, training breadth, training effectiveness, training methods, and training needs. The headquarters variable controls for the distance from the information and communication center for the ethical climate, and familiarity operationalizes perceived knowledge. The last set of variables addresses Table 1 Items Used in Constructing Perception of Ethical Climate Ethics rules and agency practices are consistent. Leadership of this agency regularly shows that it cares about ethics. Employees at all levels in this agency are held accountable for adhering to the ethical standards. If ethics concerns are reported to the agency, action is taken to resolve them. Supervisors at my work location usually pay attention to ethics. Employees who are caught violating ethics rules are disciplined. Employees in this agency recognize ethics issues when they arise. Supervisors at my agency include discussions of ethics when talking with their employees. Employees seek advice within the agency when ethics issues arise. I would feel comfortable reporting ethics violations. Note: Five-point response options for each item ranged from “strongly disagree” (1) to “strongly agree” (5). aspects of counseling. This set includes aware of officials, sought advice, official helpful, and advice useful. The filing status variable serves as both a control and as an input for advice-seeking behavior. The primary method of analysis will be ordinary least squares regression. However, previous discussion made clear that climates are both causes and consequences of many other features in an organization. Therefore, reciprocal causation is a concern. The most likely candidate for a reciprocal relationship in these data is the dichotomous variable of advice-seeking behavior. Consequently, the analysis employs twostage probit least squares regression (see Alvarez and Glasgow 1999; Keshk 2003), which is designed to deal with situations in which one endogenous variable is continuous and the other is dichotomous. Previous researchers have also identified organizational-level factors as important, and the arrangement of data allows for limited application of multilevel models (see Gelman and Hill 2007). Results Table 2 shows consistent results across four separate specifications. The results support the hypothesis that individuals higher in the organizational hierarchy (hypothesis 1) have more positive perceptions of the ethical climate (via supervisory and pay plan).4 The analyses also take on the alienation hypothesis directly via the work tenure and supervisory variables and their interactive term. Taken jointly, the three coefficients show that longer work tenure worsens perception of ethical climate, but the effect is less pronounced among supervisors (hypotheses 2 and 3). The findings support hypotheses about training, perceived knowledge, and advice seeking as well. Greater breadth of training topics (hypothesis 4b via training breadth), greater perceived effectiveness of training methods (hypothesis 5 via training effectiveness), and a lesser assessment of training needs (hypothesis 5 via training needs) all serve to improve perceptions of ethical climate. However, the mere frequency of ethics training (hypothesis 4a via training frequency) and the number of different educational methods used (hypothesis 4c via training methods, aside from the reduced-sample equation) do not have a direct effect on perception of ethical climate. Topical coverage and perceived effectiveness are more direct influences here. Greater perceived familiarity with ethics topics (hypothesis 6 via familiarity) similarly improves perception of ethical climate. However, working at the headquarters location, as a measure of proximity to the source of information, has no effect. As anticipated, being aware of the existence of ethics officials (hypothesis 7a via aware of officials) and seeking advice from these officials (hypothesis 7b via sought advice) both improve perceptions of ethical climate. Specification 2 looks at a more limited sample of individuals who sought ethics advice from a designated ethics official in their organization. The core findings here are substantively the same as those for the fuller-sample specifications. However, this specification adds variables for the perceived helpfulness of the ethics official (hypothesis 8a via official helpful) and the usefulness of the advice provided (hypothesis 8b via advice useful). These findings conform with prior expectations, as greater perceived helpfulness and usefulness lead to more positive perceptions of ethical climate. Specification 3 deals with the issue of reciprocal causation. Again, the core substantive findings remain unchanged. The Building Ethical Capital: Perceptions of Ethical Climate in the Public Sector 257 Table 2 Regressions on Individual Perception of Ethical Climate Specification 1 (OLS) Variable Supervisory Pay plan Headquarters Filing status Work tenure Tenure*supervisory Familiarity Training frequency Training breadth Training effectiveness Training methods Training needs Aware of officials Sought advice Official helpful Advice useful Constant Specification 2 (OLS subsample) Specification 3 (two-stage) Specification 4 (multilevel) Coeff. S.E. Coeff. S.E. Coeff. S.E. Coeff. S.E. 0.167*** 0.015 0.157*** 0.024 0.153*** 0.020 0.219*** 0.014 0.166*** 0.001 0.012 –0.105*** 0.071*** 0.142*** 0.005 0.010*** 0.168*** 0.002 –0.026*** 0.204*** 0.070*** 0.016 0.011 0.013 0.005 0.012 0.010 0.006 0.003 0.007 0.002 0.003 0.023 0.014 0.182*** 0.001 0.076** –0.143*** 0.111*** 0.078*** 0.014 0.014* 0.152*** 0.010** –0.040*** 0.025 0.021 0.025 0.011 0.019 0.020 0.013 0.006 0.015 0.004 0.007 0.155*** –0.009 0.020 0.013 –0.101*** 0.070*** 0.135*** 0.005 0.012 0.010 0.010*** 0.168*** 0.003 0.006 –0.028*** 0.147*** 0.056* 0.004 0.037 0.023 0.050** –0.013 –0.034* –0.102*** 0.059*** 0.149*** 0.007 0.012*** 0.165*** 0.003 –0.023*** 0.190*** 0.051** 0.018 0.012 0.015 0.004 0.012 0.010 0.006 0.003 0.006 0.002 0.004 0.023 0.016 0.148*** 0.114*** 1.582*** 0.020 0.018 0.093 2.435*** 0.087 2.239*** 0.035 0.525*** 0.072 0.330*** 0.204*** 0.285*** 0.450*** –0.039** 0.104*** 0.020*** 0.072*** 0.070*** –3.949*** 0.032 0.037 0.024 0.026 0.012 0.025 0.004 0.008 0.013 0.191 2.247*** 0.039 Dependent variable: Sought advice Perception of ethical climate Supervisory Pay plan Headquarters Filing status Work tenure Familiarity Training methods Training needs Training frequency Constant Notes: The sample size for specifications 1, 3, and 4 is 16,311, and for specification 2 is 4,104. Robust standard errors are used for specifications 1, 2, and 3 because of a problem with heteroskedastic errors. Specification 4 uses bootstrapped standard errors. R2 values (for 1–3) are 0.250, 0.319, and 0.249. Pseudo R2 for the probit portion of specification 3 is 0.124. Log likelihood for the multilevel model is –16874.794. The sought advice and perception of ethical climate independent variables reported for specification 3 are the “cleaned” versions produced by first-stage regressions. All equations use the mean-centered work tenure variable (and its interactive term, where applicable). *** p ≤ .001; ** p ≤ .01; * p ≤ .05. two-stage probit least squares regression used in this analysis recognizes the potential for reciprocal causation between perception of ethical climate and advice-seeking behavior. The “cleaned” version of the sought advice variable now has an associated p-value of .017, but this level may be reasonable for a cleaned variable in a two-stage model, even with a large number of cases. The variables dealing with helpfulness of the ethics official and usefulness of the advice would perhaps provide better results than the sought advice variable but are not usable here because of identification issues. The probit analysis for the equation with sought advice as the dependent variable produces findings that fit well with the proposed relationships. Importantly, more positive perception of ethical climate increases the likelihood of seeking advice from an ethics official in the organization. Most of the other independent variables relate to the likelihood that a given employee will need ethics advice. Findings show greater advice-seeking behavior among those employees who are supervisors, are on executive/other pay plans, work at headquarters, file financial disclosure reports, perceive greater training needs, and have worked in the federal government for a shorter period of time. The training goal of increasing sensitivity to ethics topics also seems to be working in that training frequency and the use of additional training methods contribute to greater advice-seeking behavior. 258 Public Administration Review • March | April 2013 The findings under specification 4 are for a multilevel linear regression analysis. None of the organization-level variables related to training, knowledge, or advice climates (hypotheses 9a–c) proved statistically significant. Consequently, the specification reported here simply controls for the different organizational groupings. Though diagnostic procedures suggest only 7 percent of the variance in perceptions of ethical climate is attributable to organization-level factors, a likelihood ratio test shows statistically significant differences between the single-level and multilevel models (χ-bar2 = 423.73, p ≤ 001).5 The findings for the multilevel model are rather consistent with the previous findings. The only differences are that the effects for pay plan and sought advice are smaller and the coefficient for filing status here is negative and significant (at p = .021). Figure 1 provides estimates of standardized effects based on the coefficients from the multilevel modeling. The standardized effect sizes are equal to the coefficient for dichotomous variables and equal to a two-standard-deviation change multiplied by the estimated coefficient for continuous independent variables (see Gelman and Hill 2007, 57). For ease of comparability, the figure uses absolute values rather than directional ones and excludes variables with statistically insignificant coefficients. Figure 1 shows that supervisory status diminishes the negative impact of work tenure on perception of ethical climate and that supervisory status has a large positive effect in its own right. The impacts of the perceived effectiveness of Work tenure (non-supervisor) Work tenure (supervisor) 0.257 0.109 Supervisory (at mean tenure) Aware of officials Sought advice Pay plan Filing status 0.051 0.050 0.034 Training effectiveness Familiarity Training needs Training breadth 0.219 0.190 Interaction Dichotomous 0.413 0.243 0.091 0.068 0.0 0.1 Continuous 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 Absolute Change in Perception of Ethical Climate Notes: Effect sizes are for a 0–1 change for the dichotomous variables and a 2-standard-deviation change for continuous variables (including work tenure in the 0–1 interaction with supervisory). Effects are negative for work tenure, filing status, and training needs. Figure 1 Standardized Impact on Perception of Ethical Climate training methods and of perceived familiarity with ethics rules also clearly stand out here. The empirical findings do not produce significant surprises, but this lack of surprise usefully suggests two things: (1) that public servant perceptions of ethical climate have certain logical, manageable sources and (2) that researchers might be able to import pieces of a well-developed literature on ethical climate from the business and organizational management literatures. Many of the individual-level findings mirror previous private sector findings; this correspondence makes sense when one considers the psychological nature of many of the causal mechanisms. However, the data also suggest that processes influencing ethical climate do not change much across organizations of the executive branch, which would stand in contrast to differences across private sector organizations. The centralized direction provided by OGE and the existence of branch-wide standards likely contribute to this uniformity. The article provides some suggestions about how to improve views of ethics in government among public servants. Specifically, the findings suggest that ethics programs aimed at leadership may be having the desired effect but that special emphasis should be placed on communicating the importance of ethics to longer-tenured employees (especially of the nonsupervisory variety). The more positive views of ethical climate among organizational leaders further suggest that ethical capital accrues at the leadership level and might be mobilized to improve views throughout the organization. Additionally, it is important for public servants to evaluate ethics training as effective and for training to cover a wider range of topics and to leave public servants feeling familiar with those topics. Similarly, public servants should be made aware of ethics officials, encouraged to seek advice from them, and come away feeling that the officials were helpful and the advice was useful. Summary and Discussion This article has examined sources of public servant perceptions of ethical climate in the bureaucracy and, in so doing, has added to the relatively sparse information about ethical climate in the public sector and about influences on such perceptions generally. Assessing these influences is important given the range of beneficial outcomes produced by more positive perceptions of ethical climate. The concept of ethical capital captures the idea that these positive perceptions accrue in such a way that they contribute to other positive attitudes, behaviors, and performance outcomes. Further, this article tests underlying assumptions and provides empirical support The findings suggest that public for aspects of government ethics programs administrators can take spebeing encouraged in international anticorcific actions to improve public ruption agreements and receiving public servant perceptions of ethical revenues. The findings suggest that public climate, perhaps influencing administrators can take specific actions to mass perceptions of government improve public servant perceptions of ethical climate, perhaps influencing mass perceptions accountability and trustworthiof government accountability and trustworness, as well. thiness, as well. Empirical analyses show that public servants in leadership positions in the executive branch of the U.S. government tend to think more highly of the ethical climate; the results also show that work tenure tends to diminish perceptions of ethical climate, although this effect is more pronounced for nonsupervisors. Ethics training, interaction with ethics officials, and the perceived knowledge produced by these information transfers have consistently positive influences on perceptions of ethical climate and on advice-seeking behavior throughout the empirical analyses. However, the mere frequency of training and diversity of educational methods are not causally important when one also considers the topical breadth and perceived effectiveness of training. The latter seems particularly forceful. Findings related to advice-seeking behavior reinforce the importance of ethics officials, as views concerning the helpfulness of these officials and the usefulness of their advice affect perceptions of ethical climate. A potential limitation of this study is that the nonrandom sample of organizations may restrict the ability to generalize across all executive branch organizations. However, the relatively small variance in the data at the organizational level, the match of these findings with others from the literature, and uniformity in the implementation of the executive branch ethics program all serve to reduce concerns about organizational representativeness. Similarly, the response rate for the electronically distributed survey is perhaps low, but further analysis suggests that nonresponse bias is not problematic. An additional limitation is that the data do not include measures of related climates within the organizations; such data would be useful in understanding relationships and relative impacts of climates (see Vashdi, Vigoda-Gadot, and Shlomi 2012). Finally, the use of a single survey instrument to collect all of the analyzed data from a single sample raises the issue of common method variance. The concern is that relationships between variables in the data might be inflated or attenuated due to their derivation from a common source (individual respondents in this case) and method (a particular survey instrument). Again, the fit of the findings here with previous research that used different sources and methods reduces such concerns. This article points toward avenues of continued or new inquiry. One such avenue is exploring how to best utilize that ethical capital Building Ethical Capital: Perceptions of Ethical Climate in the Public Sector 259 Appendix A Recommendations Concerning Ethics Training and Counseling in International Documents International Agreement/Guidance Relevant Provision(s) Inter-American Convention against Corruption (1996) Article 3.3. “Instruction to government personnel to ensure proper understanding of their responsibilities and ethical rules governing their activities” No. 2, “Effective practices include . . . training and counseling of officials to ensure proper understanding of their responsibilities and the ethical rules governing their activities as well as their own professionalism and competence” Article 25.2, “The supervisor who supervises or manages other public officials should take reasonable steps to prevent corruption by his or her staff in relation to his or her office. These steps may include … providing appropriate education or training” Pillar 1, “Regular education, training and supervision of officials to ensure proper understanding of their responsibilities” Global Forum I Guiding Principles for Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity among Justice and Security Officials (1999) Council of Europe Recommendation No. R (2000) 10 Appendix, Model Code of Conduct for Public Officials (2000) Asian Development Bank/Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Anti-Corruption Action Plan for Asia and the Pacific (2000) African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption (2003) United Nations Convention against Corruption (2003) Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Course of Action on Fighting Corruption and Ensuring Transparency (2004) Article 7.2, “Create an internal committee or a similar body mandated to establish a code of conduct and to monitor its implementation, and sensitize and train public officials on matters of ethics” Chapter 1, Article 6, Subparagraph 1.b, “Increasing and disseminating knowledge about the prevention of corruption” Chapter 1, Article 7, Subparagraph 1.b, “[A]dequate procedures for the selection and training of individuals for public positions considered especially vulnerable to corruption” Chapter 1, Article 7, Subparagraph 1.d, “[P]romote education and training programs to enable [civil servants] to meet the requirements for the correct, honorable and proper performance of public functions . . . provide them with specialized and appropriate training to enhance their awareness of the risks of corruption inherent in the performance of their functions” I. “Develop training and capacity building efforts to help on the effective implementation of the [United Nations Convention against Corruption]’s provisions for fighting corruption” Note: Agreements or guidance documents appear in chronological order of adoption. Appendix B Summary of Variables Used in Analyses Variable Description Mean S.D. Range Perception of ethical climate Supervisory Pay plan Headquarters Filing status Work tenure Familiarity Training frequency Training breadth Training effectiveness Training methods Training needs Aware of officials Sought advice Official helpful 10-item summated (average) rating scale of perceived ethical climate (see table 1 for items) Holds a supervisory position Executive or non-GS, nonwage pay status Works at agency headquarters Financial disclosure filer last year Categories of length of time worked for federal government 8-item unweighted measure (α = .906) of level of familiarity with different ethics topics Categorical frequency of ethics training Number of different ethics topics covered in training Average perceived effectiveness of training methods used Number of different ethics training methods to which employee exposed Number of ethics topic areas in which employee perceived further training needs Aware that organization has formal ethics officials Sought advice from organization ethics official in last two years 3-item summated rating scale (α = .916) of helpfulness of ethics official (i.e., in resolving questions, in responding in a timely manner, in explaining rationale) 2-item summated rating scale (α = .889) of usefulness of advice from ethics official (i.e., in making you more aware, in guiding your decisions and conduct) 3.559 0.199 0.114 0.447 0.450 4.768 3.371 4.259 4.978 3.188 5.471 1.948 0.915 0.254 4.240 0.797 0.399 0.318 0.497 0.498 1.262 0.814 1.313 2.838 1.253 3.441 1.979 0.279 0.435 0.881 1–5 0–1 0–1 0–1 0–1 1–6 1–5 1–6 0–8 0–5 0–11 0–8 0–1 0–1 1–5 4.027 0.961 1–5 Advice useful Notes: Means and standard deviations are calculated based on cases included in the analyses, which is 16,311 for most variables but 4,104 for the final two variables listed. that accrues at the leadership level. Are the traditional routes (e.g., codes of conduct and ethics education) effective enough, or should they be supplemented with other mechanisms? Some researchers of “behavioral ethics” in the business literature (e.g., Bazerman and Tenbrunsel 2011) suggest that traditional ethics programs frequently fail because of basic characteristics of human decision making. Their approach seemingly stands at odds with some of the research cited here. What are the reasons for the discrepancies? Could perceptions of ethical climate be used to identify incongruence between policies and behavior that could lead to trouble based on characteristics of decision making? In other words, could perceptions of ethical climate function as an early-warning tool? Another potential avenue is further examining how government ethics generally—as administrative process or as part of performance 260 Public Administration Review • March | April 2013 broadly construed—influences mass perceptions of government accountability and trustworthiness. A related line of inquiry would be examining how public servant perceptions influence mass evaluations of procedural democracy through social networks. These potential influences on mass perceptions are consequential, as more positive mass perceptions of ethical behavior in the public administration can lead to greater political participation, satisfaction with public services, trust in governance, and political efficacy (Vigoda 2000; Vigoda-Gadot 2007). Disclaimer Eric D. Raile is a special government employee of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE). However, the views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of OGE or of the U.S. government. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The data, previously collected by the federal government, do not provide the identities of the executive branch agencies. Officials have confirmed that organizations were not chosen based on particular ethics performance issues and that the sample includes a variety of organizations in terms of size, type, and autonomy. Summated rating scales are most appropriate for a unidimensional trait when the individual measurement items are ordinal (see Jacoby 1991). The underlying trait here is best thought of as a positive/negative or good/bad evaluation of the climate. A proper method for assessing the appropriateness of a summated rating scale is comparison of each item individually against the other items combined (i.e., the “restscores”) with lowess curves to ascertain whether all relationships are monotonic. All items here meet this criterion. The measure stands up well to assessments of its reliability and validity. In terms of reliability, Cronbach’s alpha for the 10 items is .935. The item wording included in table 1 allows for assessment of face validity, while the diversity of ethical climate elements included in the measure argues for its content validity. Factor analyses to establish construct validity (and to test the assumption of unidimensionality) show a strong unidimensional solution for this particular combination of 10 items. Use of a principal factors solution method provides an eigenvalue of 5.969 for the single dimension, with factor loadings ranging from 0.64 to 0.85. Factor loadings produced by a confirmatory factor analysis are virtually identical, with fit indices above generally accepted levels (comparative fit index = 0.97; normed fit index = 0.97). Factor analysis was also used in establishing divergent validity of the summated rating scales. Not surprisingly, the official helpful and advice useful scales shared substantial variance. 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Yet when, in 2013, roughly one in every 35 adults, disproportionately black and Latino, were under some kind of correctional supervision, how can it NOT be vital to the work of Christian ethics?2 We have not yet fully reckoned with the sheer misery and stunning inequality of our criminal justice system, which is a way of life for some sectors of the American people. The need to grapple with our criminal justice system in the US has been underlined in 2014 by the contentious responses to the deaths of two black men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, during their encounters with police. The powerful and justified anger about vast racial inequities in our criminal justice system are evident. And it is exactly in the midst of this anger that it is even more important to understand what has brought us to the wretched place in which US policing, prosecution, and incarceration exist. As with any important public issue, there is no one easy answer to this “what.” Stuntz’s book helps us better understand some strands, which is a step toward imagining and enacting responses. However, what has raised Collapse to some visibility among Christian ethicists is the knowledge that Stuntz wrote not only as a prominent scholar of constitutional law but also as a committed Christian who wrote elsewhere about the relation of Christianity and law.3 Collapse is by no means a standard text in Christian 1 Stuntz W. The collapse of American criminal justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 2011). Correctional supervision means “under the jurisdiction or legal authority of state and federal correctional officials” and thus includes: (1) incarceration in federal or state prisons or jails and (2) federal or state parole or probation. Glaze LE, Kaeble D. Correctional populations in the United States, 2013 [Internet]. Bureau of Justice Statistics [cited Jan 24, 2014]. Available from: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus13.pdf. This statistic has improved slightly in the last years from a high of 1 in 31 in 2006 and 2007. 3 Stuntz W. Christian legal theory. Book review. Harvard Law Review. 2003;116:1707 – 49. From 2008 until his death in 2011, Stuntz shared a blog, Less Than the Least, with his fellow evangelical Protestant and law professor, David Skeel (Stuntz W, Skeel D. Less than the least blog [Internet]. David Skeel and William Stuntz; 2008. Available from: https://www.law.upenn.edu/blogs/dskeel/). 2 ß W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2015 DOI 10.1179/1462317X15Z.000000000137 268 ELIZABETH BOUNDS theology; indeed, it contains no explicit references to Stuntz’s faith. Yet, it is fair to consider the ways in which his underlying framework is infused by Christian theomoral commitments. Within his carefully constructed arguments, occasionally appears an underlying theological world view with a deep Protestant/Augustinian sense of sin and evangelical conviction of the radical possibility of Christianity. I respond to Stuntz’s work as a Christian ethicist who has researched and reflected upon the history and present conditions of incarceration in the US and as a white person who has spent time with incarcerated persons, primarily women, many, but not all, of whom are African-American. So from that perspective, I first want to highlight the distinctive contribution the book makes to questions of incarceration. After doing this, I will mention some concerns, which will lead to engagement with this work in dialog with Christian ethics. The complex historical understanding and sense of contingency Stuntz brings to the story of our criminal justice system is a welcome counter to ways that criminology can flatten the story into certain trends or what Stuntz calls “the standard account” or “academic conventional wisdom” (255). While he is sometimes overly generalizing and dismissive of this account, especially since he too can slip into an oversimplified and unidirectional storyline, he is right in pointing to the challenges inherent in telling well the story of US mass incarceration. Much of the current focus has been on more recent changes such as the War on Drugs and its accompanying laws or the sentencing restrictions that permits no attention to mitigating circumstances. There are many valuable works in this category.4 However, the story tends to cover a few decades and is often shaped to suggest only one key cause for the rise of mass incarceration, such as racism or economic exploitation. Stuntz’s historical sensibility widens the time frame back to Reconstruction. And because he sees that there are historical coincidences (rather than simply the unrolling of a theory or a single systemic injustice), he reads together multiple relevant factors such as business cycles, crime cycles, shifts in law enforcement, migrations, riots, political shifts, shifts in political rhetoric, along with underlying inegalitarian and oppressive economic, and racial structures.5 He attends to these factors in the histories of the North and the South, extremely important as the history of prisons and criminal justice in US is very much a regional history. But amidst all of these factors, Stuntz maintains a strong awareness of how race has so thoroughly shaped (but not determined) the history he tells, with continuous references to the ways in which African-Americans have been on a damning short end of legal, economic, and social policies. Of course, the most obvious and most critical additional insight Stuntz brings to a discussion of the roots of mass incarceration is his understanding of the history and operation of criminal and, especially, constitutional law. He crafts an account of what he considers the collapse of rule of law that is deeply critical of the heritage of more liberal frameworks of law. There are two major areas of loss highlighted. One is the loss of substantive law in favor of procedural law, which makes law “a menu 4 Excellent examples include: Alexander M. The new Jim Crow: mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. NY: New Press; 2012. Wacquant L. Punishing the poor: the neoliberal government of social insecurity. Durham, NC: Duke; 2009. Western B. Punishment and inequality in America. NY: Russell Sage Foundation; 2007. 5 See for example, his discussion of the rise of mass incarceration. p. 251 –67). CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY 269 of options” manipulated by “official discretion” (2, 4). The other is an excessive centralization, favoring federal over state jurisdiction, and both federal and state over local jurisdiction. Stuntz highlights the roots of these legal shifts in two key legal eras: Reconstruction and the Civil Rights era. Under Reconstruction, the guarantees of equal protection for African-Americans under the Fourteenth Amendment were gutted. Under the Warren Court, these guarantees were set aside in favor of an emphasis on due process. For Stuntz, “freezing procedures in place,” which is what he believes has occurred in the past few decades, is necessarily bad law since procedure, in contrast to substance, is contextual and thus must be able to respond to differing needs and contingencies (79). This fundamental legal misorientation, he argues, was deepened by an ongoing loss of local control in favor of professionalization and specialization embodied in a turn away from jury trials to plea bargaining (194). What was personally the most helpful to me was Stuntz’s account of the shifts in the nature of the role of the prosecutor. Over the years, I have encountered multiple versions of the following story: a young man or woman, often African-American and almost certainly from a family without resources, is told by a DA that if they just plead out, they will get a reduced sentence that cannot be guaranteed by a trial. While sometimes this is indeed a better deal, it often is not, especially if the person has actually not committed the crime. Another common story is a return to incarceration because of parole or probation violations.6 I know of a young African-American man on probation who ended up sitting for 15 months in the county jail awaiting trial for child cruelty charges based on a situation where his child had taken off his seatbelt in the car in a minor car accident. This story hinged on the probation status, along with the refusal of this young man to plead guilty. Stuntz’s explanation of prosecutorial powers enabled me to understand both of these stories. The District Attorney, elected often by persons not from the community of most offenders (192), has the power to determine charges. S/he knows that guilty pleas are easy to extract and cheaper in terms of both time and money, than jury trials (259, 270–9). Stuntz’s account explains how our criminal justice system has become an impossible tangle, replete with moments that could come from Kafka’s the Trial. Stuntz lays out brilliantly how the liberal proceduralism instituted by those who intended to equalize has done quite the reverse. What worries me, however, are some moments where I find Stuntz’s commitments to over-determine his reading of this detailed history.7 I found myself at moments thinking fondly of John Rawls whose liberal account of justice, with all of its many flaws, did grasp how forms of procedural neutrality can and do promote greater equality and fairness. Stuntz’s critiques of its failures are apt but I think a truly historical sensibility needs to be alert to its strengths. 6 In 2013, 1 in 51 US adults were on probation or parole. In 2012, 34% of those on probation were considered to have committed some sort of violation resulting in 5.1% being re-incarcerated. Fifty-two percent on parole were considered to have committed some sort of violation resulting in 9% re-incarceration. See Glaze and Kaeble, Correctional populations in the United States, 2013; and Maruschak LM, Bonczar TP. Probation and parole in the United States, 2012 [Internet]. Bureau of Justice Statistics [cited Jan 24, 2014]. Available from: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ ppus12.pdf. 7 I am not going to comment on the substance versus procedure debate in relation to the trajectory of the 14th Amendment as I simply do not know enough about the processes of substantive law. 270 ELIZABETH BOUNDS This tendency to a blanket critique, along with some romanticization of the past, is more evident in Stuntz’s case for increased local control. Working for greater local control in aspects of criminal justice is indeed critical and is part of such current efforts as community policing, valued by many of those living in inner-city crimefilled communities, and alternative sentencing (55, 280). More funding for the training and manpower required for basic sidewalk policing, carried out in dialog with local communities, is one response to the current anger over the treatment of young black men in the United States. Nevertheless, it is important to not see localism as a sweeping solution, especially when making comparative historical judgments. Stuntz gives what I find to be a rosy summary of criminal justice in the nineteenth century US North and Midwest, saying that their forms of criminal punishment “appear to have been both less discriminatory and vastly more lenient than today” (131). While this is certainly true in contrast to the truly horrific history of the South and may even be a somewhat justified comparison, I still find that it minimizes the brutality of northern and mid-western prisons in both the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.8 The rehabilitation and reform emphases of the “new” penologists of the early twentieth century were hardly ever very effective and were actually never meant to be extended to African-American prisoners. A succinct example of the problem comes in Stuntz’s remark that in the nineteenth century “voteless, abused woman actually fared better than their counterparts in our own time” since they were often not punished for killing abusive husbands (136). While this is indeed factually the case, it is a comparison on only a strictly legal level, ignoring the efforts of many women and some men to bring greater awareness and legal/police support for women caught in domestic violence, not to mention the changes in the status of women in politics, economics, and society over the decades. In these moments, I believe the politics of law drives Stuntz’s account so that, in spite of the extraordinary complexity he outlines, he lets law trump issues of social relations and economics. The law may have been better in the nineteenth century north and there surely was greater local control, but I imagine that few African-Americans or women of all races would be interested in living under that legal framework. Further, public debate over the deaths of Brown and Garner, and the legal aftermath, has revealed again wide gaps in experience and understanding that are fueled by cheap symbolic politics, supported by television and website rhetoric. How would these by addressed by localism? So what does all of this have to do with Christian ethics? Stuntz’s criticisms of liberalism and concern for locality align him with the anti-liberal trends in recent Christian ethics and theology.9 They share for example an attack on a liberal optimistic narrative of progress, as Stuntz, at the end of his book, puts aside optimism for hope (311). In several places, I thought Stuntz outdid some of his possible counterparts in Christian ethics and theology with his real engagement with deep historicism and the role of coincidence, along with a strong emphasis on 8 See for example, Gottschalk M. The prison and the gallows: the politics of mass incarceration in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2006); and McLennan RM. The crisis of imprisonment: protest, politics, and the making of the American penal state, 1776-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2008). 9 I am referring here loosely to a wide variety of works, mostly drawing on strands of the Radical Reformation and/or pre-modern Augustinianism. CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY 271 limits and humility (not, in my experience, part of the equipment of many antiliberal ethicists and theologians). One underlying question in the ongoing critique of liberalism is the nature of the shared understandings of the community, which certainly requires consideration of law as a shared moral resource. Stuntz himself is very circumspect about these connections. In his 2003 review of Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought,10 he criticizes sharply any simple moralistic reading of law, remarking “Law may sometimes be an effective moral teacher, although I confess to having some doubts” (1740). Yet on occasion, he suggests something more as in Collapse he begins his withering critique of the Warren Court with naming their basic mistake of grounding the law of criminal procedure in the Bill of Rights, “instead of using that body of law to advance some coherent vision of fair and equal criminal justice” (227 – 8). This loss of vision is a loss of moral dimensions of law since, for example, his concern about the impact of the overemphasis on due process is that juries are no longer asked “to decide whether individual defendants deserved criminal punishment,” surely a morally infused question, and not simply determine witness credibility (140 –1). Part of Stuntz’s concern for a telos is connected to an understanding of the complexity and fluidity of social consensus. We have experienced a remarkable turnaround in US in the last few decades from an implicit consensus on the rehabilitative purposes of incarceration (whether or not realized in actual prison practices) to a consensus on retribution/deterrence as driving punishment. And there are signs that the social consensus may be shifting again. While this description could suggest a “bad” moral consensus, Stuntz prefers the idea of a lost moral consensus, where the lack of a shared morality is evident in a lack of shared community, which enables poor blacks to be seen more easily as “the Other” (312). In the end, Stuntz may believe that the best chance we have for a better consensus (aligned with an underlying Christian vision, along presumably with other compatible visions) are persons who have deeper moral formation. In his review essay, he suggests that the intersection of Christianity and law rests on a reality that “Christianity’s bite may be (in my view, is) mostly relational and attitudinal.”11 Stuntz’s own “coherent vision” (theology?) of the reality of sin is present in his insistence on approaching the law with humility and a sense of limits, which requires “a justice system whose rulers remember that they too are tempted to do wrong, and often yield to the temptation” (311). In his review essay, he frequently points to the radical nature of Christianity whose power he contrasts with the inability of law to “put a stop to the selfishness and exploitation to which we are so obviously prone.”12 He emphasizes the importance of family attachments, “the one place in life where we seem most prone to advance others’ interests ahead of our own.” And he goes on to suggest the importance of a different family “because we need to become different people [ . . . ]. Only a new birth into a new household can do this,” [imagery that is evident reference to the Christian community].13 10 11 12 13 Stuntz, Christian legal theory. Stuntz, Christian legal theory, p. 1727. Ibid., p. 1748. Ibid. 272 ELIZABETH BOUNDS It would be easy to move from there to simply champion local control, or, in the realm of Christian ethics, church-based approaches, etc. But I come back here to the problem of the kind of community and the kind of localism that may be constructed. Just because something is communal and local does not necessarily make it morally worthy. In the complex and intersecting world we live in, we cannot have only local control but need, I think, to attend to a variety of levels. For example, the legal framework Stuntz engages relies upon state-based rule of law that at its best, presses localisms into a broader common arena. Imagining work at a variety of levels might be a good way of thinking about the challenges Stuntz’s work offers for Christian ethics. One of my favorite pieces by Jim Gustafson is Varieties of Moral Discourse where he describes how Christian ethics works differently at different discursive levels, which for him are prophetic, narrative, ethical, and policy. While we can argue about whether we need to add to these categories, the point to be made here is that Christian ethics does different work in all of these differing forms. This is an important reality for further ethical/theological reflection. While Stuntz is concerned with what Gustafson would term narrative ethics that shapes personal morality, this necessarily local and particular discourse has to be conducted in relation to much broader structures of law and politics, which require work at the policy level. This is Gustafson’s own favorite level, and one which, for a variety of historical/social factors has been largely ignored in the recent history of the Society of Christian Ethics. Currently, many states are engaged in serious criminal justice reform; albeit for economic, not moral reasons! One focus of these reform efforts has been reentry policy and programing since over 40% of persons released from prison return within 3 years (Pew Center on the States). Christian organizations are viewed, for better or for worse, as key partners in these reform efforts. Can Stuntz help us imagine ways that Christian ethics can be of use? Notes on contributor Elizabeth Bounds is associate professor of Christian ethics at Emory University and administrator of a theology program at a women’s prison in Georgia, USA. Correspondence to: Elizabeth Bounds, email: ebounds@emory.edu Copyright of Political Theology is the property of Maney Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. 2015] The Ethical Boundaries 229 another’s insurance policy coverage (the attorney was also seeking to represent the person with the insurance policy), the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the state had an interest in regulating solicitation of business by a lawyer because “direct, in-person communication with the prospective client has long been viewed as inconsistent with the profession’s ideal of the attorney-client relationship and as posing a significant potential for harm to the prospective client.” 185 The boundaries of attorney disclosure of confidential information belonging to the client are not always clear. What is clear is that the attorney should always seek informed consent from the client before any disclosure is made. Once the informed consent in writing is received by the attorney, the attorney is protected from future legal ramifications from the disclosure as long as the disclosure is made within the perimeters of the informed consent. It is the attorney’s ethical responsibility to assert the attorney-client evidentiary privilege on behalf of the client when it is applicable to do so. Obtaining informed consent is not always possible. When informed consent cannot be obtained from a client, the attorney should consult with others (superiors, judges, courts, or bar associations) prior to making the disclosure to prevent any disciplinary repercussions should the disclosure later be determined to be an ethical violation. Attorneys have historically been “officers of the courts” and are essential to administering justice for all. 186 Justice for the client is served when the confidentiality of the attorney-client privilege is maintained. 185. 186. Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Ass’n., 436 U.S. 447, 454 (1978). Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U.S. 773, 792 (1975). L a w y e r s o f A l l F a i t h s : C o n s t r u c t in g P r o f e s s io n a l I d e n t it y a n d F in d in g C o m m o n G r o u n d By Isabelle R. Gunning* A bstract Can one be a faithful lawyer? This article, based on a qualitative, empirical study, argues that lawyers from all religious and spiritual traditions constitute a singular community with shared values across their different religious perspectives. The article posits that the community of lawyers of all faiths constitutes a model for the American Bar in defining and refining a legal professional identity that encompasses the range of views and values present in our pluralistic bar. The dominant view of a lawyer’s professional legal identity is that a lawyer should be concerned solely with her professional or organizational identity and should “bleach out” any other personal or group identities. This article builds upon the previous work of the Religious Lawyering Movement (RLM), which has challenged the view that religion or spirituality has no place in a lawyer’s professional life. While past RLM scholarship studied religious lawyers segregated within particular religious traditions, this article, relying on the results of a study of a diverse group of lawyers, assumes a different perspective: that lawyers from different religious backgrounds share a number of commonalities and values that support excellence in their lawyering. The ability of lawyers from diverse religious backgrounds to find common ground in their work provides a positive example for a professional legal identity that is inclusive of diverse perspectives. Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School, Los Angeles; J.D., Yale Law School; B.S., Yale College. I presented this paper in 2014 at the sixth International Legal Ethics Conference hosted by the City University London. 1 would like to thank the conference organizers for selecting my co-panelists and myself to participate, my co-panelists Rakesh K. Anand and Azizah al-Hibri, and our moderator Russell Pearce. Also, thanks to Ronald Aronovsky, A1 Calnan, Catherine Carpenter, Danni Hart, Austen Parrish, Gowri Ramachandran, and Kelly Strader for their enormously helpful comments and encouragement on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks to Mackenzie Brown, Jessica Nadler, Tania Ochoa, Karine Panosian, Nadia Sokolova, and Bryan Weiser for their excellent research assistance. Thanks to Antonio Brown for his help and insights from a social scientist’s research perspective. And finally, heartfelt thanks to the lawyers of faith who agreed to participate in this research project. 231 Introduction Can one be a faithful lawyer? Can the legal profession embrace lawyers of faith without it leading to the balkanization of the profession in ways that mirror the religious strife seen within and between countries around the world? The dominant view of a lawyer’s professional legal identity is that a lawyer should be solely concerned with his professional or organizational identity and should “bleach out” any other personal or group identities. 12 There are contemporary minority voices within the profession that differ with this dominant view,” with some defining the “authentic lawyer” as one with “the ability to hold on to personal values and goals while integrating them with a newly-acquired identity as a lawyer.” 3 However, the legal profession has been especially hesitant to legitimize the inclusion of a lawyer’s personal religious or spiritual values into her professional legal identity. This article extends the tradition of the Religious Lawyering Movement (RLM), an intellectual movement of legal scholars and lawyers who contend that there is a role for lawyers’ religious or spiritual beliefs in their lawyering and a role for faith in the construction of lawyers’ legal professional identity. Historically, RLM scholars and lawyers gathered at interfaith conferences to develop ideas around the religious lawyer and religious lawyering. Findings at such conferences indicated some expectation that lawyers of different faiths could converse and promote the idea that religion or spirituality is professionally important to lawyers of faith.4 1. See Sanford Levinson, Identifying the Jewish Lawyer: Reflections on the Construction o f Professional Identity, 14 CARDOZO L. R ev . 1577, 1578 (1993); see also David A. Thomas & Clayton P. Alderfer, The Influence o f Race on Career Dynamics: Theory and Research on Minority Career Experiences, in HANDBOOK OF CAREER THEORY 133, 145 (Michael B. Arthur et al. eds., 1989) (providing a brief explanation of the terms “organizational identity” and “group identity” from intergroup theory in psychology). 2. Standing C omm , on P rofessionalism , A.B.A., Essential Qualities of the Professional Lawyer (Paul A. Haskins ed., 2014) [hereinafter Essential Q ualities of the Professional Lawyer ]. 3. Essential Q ualities of the P rofessional Lawyer , supra note 2, at 20. 4. Symposium, The Religious Lawyering Movement: An Emerging Force in Legal Ethics and Professionalism, 66 FORDHAM L. R ev . 1075 (1998). 232 2015] Lawyers of All Faiths 233 Despite these findings, the approach of RLM scholars has been to study lawyers of faith only within their separate silos of specific religious traditions. While this tactic was appropriate to begin the RLM conversation, continuing to study lawyers of faith only within individual faith traditions sends the message that the RLM conversation is primarily for the most conservative of religious lawyers, i.e., those who rarely find community with lawyers outside of their own particular faith’s traditions. This tactic risks turning RLM into a divisive approach within the legal profession. In this article, the author contends that the next step in the RLM needs to be the study of lawyers of all faiths. The article fits in the RLM scholarly conversation, but extends the RLM scholarship. It argues that all lawyers of faith— even those from more exclusive religious traditions—have so many commonalities as religious/spiritual lawyers that they can and should be considered a single assessable community. Recognizing that all religious or spiritual lawyers constitute a singular community is important because if lawyers from diverse religions and spiritual traditions can find a significant number of shared moral and professional values, such lawyers become a model for the American Bar in defining (or refining) a professional legal identity that encompasses the range of views and values present in our pluralistic bar." The RLM challenges the dominant view of the professional role for lawyers. Other intellectual approaches, such as critical feminism and critical race theory, have raised similar criticisms in scholarly legal circles.56 Both critical feminist and race theories challenge the idea that a lawyer’s 5. See Robert F. Cochran, Professionalism in the Postmodern Age: Its Death, Attempts at Resuscitation, and Alternate Sources o f Virtue, 14 NOTRE Dame J.L. ETHICS & Pub . Po l ’Y 305 (2000) (tracing the history of legal professionalism, explaining its “death” once the bar became more diverse in terms of race, class, and gender, and expressing both hope and concern with attempts to identify common ideals, given the diversity o f the bar). 6. Feminist legal theory combatted the essentialism of ostensibly neutral legal categories by documenting the identity and consciousness of women as a social category by exploring the actual lived experience of women; critical race feminism combatted the essentialism of feminist legal theory by documenting the multi-faceted identities and multiple consciousnesses of women of color by exploring their real-life experiences. See, for example, Adrien Katherine Wing, Introduction to CRITICAL R ace FEMINISM: a Reader , 1, 2-5 (Adrien Katherine Wing ed., 2003), which collects not only theoretical works challenging the essentialism of feminist legal theory, but also collects the narratives of women of color. In a similar vein, RLM is challenging the essentialism of the dominant view o f the legal profession by focusing on the idea that religion is as much an identity category as a belief system. See also Joan W. Howarth, Teaching Freedom: Exclusionary Rights o f Student Groups, 42 U.C. Davis L. Rev . 889, 914 (2009) (building on this theory as well as compiling empirical evidence of the narratives of lawyers of faith). For similar approaches among feminist biblical scholars, see, for example, Ute E. Eisen, Women O fficeholders in Early C hristianity : Epigraphical and Literary Studies 3 (2000); Women in Church Leadership: Jesus and Women, FUTURECHURCH, http://futurechurch.org/wicl/jesuswomen.htm (last visited Sept. 29, 2013) (“In evaluating historical data, feminist biblical scholars and Church historians now recognize the importance of differentiating between ‘gender ideology’ and ‘the reality of women’s lives.’”). 234 The Journal of the Legal Profession [Vol. 39:2 identity and legal categories can be defined by neutral classifications that do not privilege one class or group experience over others. Indeed, it is through critical feminist, race, and queer legal theories that the criticism is fully developed to reveal as false that all claims with facially neutral legal standards are neutral in effect. Standards and tests will always have “group identification content.”7 If the standards and tests have been created out of a process that includes neither an examination of unconscious assumptions nor the inclusion of multiple group identification perspectives, then the perspective that will be embedded in the standards will likely be the dominant identity group—white, wealthy, heterosexual, able-bodied male with American citizenship “status.” These compelling arguments lead to the conclusion articulated by Professor Russell Pearce, a leader in the RLM, that the legal professional ideal of “bleaching out” is not just (arguably) undesirable, it is actually “unrealizable.”89 Two questions arise from this observation: what should replace the “bleaching out” dominant view, and how can other personal or group identities be included in a shared professional identity? Scholars and lawyers from a variety of faith traditions have argued persuasively for the inclusion of one particular set of personal or group identities in one’s lawyering—religious or spiritual values. But if there is to be a shared professional identity, we must grapple with the issue of whether professional values are able to coincide with, and can be mediated by, personal or group identity values. Typically, religion or faith is expected to impact lawyering by anchoring lawyers moral values and thereby impacting their sense of what is ethical.4 This raise...
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Adherence to Christian Values and Christian Leadership in the Criminal Justice System
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Abstract
This article discusses how Christian leaders in the criminal justice system aid in the
administration of prisons, as well as how devotion to Christian principles and beliefs can aid in
the promotion of allegiance to the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Standards of Employee Conduct
and rules in general. Several government agencies and organizations make up the criminal justice
system. The rehabilitation of offenders, the prevention of other crimes, and spiritual assistance
for victims are all goals. The police, prosecutors and defense attorneys, judges, and prisoners are
the central figures of the criminal justice system. The Christian leaders recognize the biblical
obligation to preach to those individuals who are incarcerated and to relatives affected by
detention centers because the United States has the highest rate of incarceration among
developed countries, with approximately 1.6 million Americans currently imprisoned. It’s
important for Christians to be involved in criminal justice system to help in addressing the issues
affecting inmates. Also, teaching the Christians values and beliefs could help in promoting good
morals and ethics.

Adherence to Christian Values and Christian Leadership in the Criminal Justice System
Christian leaders acknowledge that the Church's need to impart the word of god to
everyone in prison,...


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