Guided Response: Review several of your colleagues’ posts and respond to at least two of your peers with at least one scholarly source. Decide whether you agree with them and explain.
Peer 1.
Within the sphere of criminal justice and the assessment of programs, ethical considerations are paramount to ensure the fairness, integrity, and ethical conduct of evaluations. McDavid et al. (2019) discusses three ethical systems in Chapter 12: deontological ethics, duty ethics, and consequentialism. Deontological ethics focuses on the inherent rightness or wrongness of actions, duty ethics emphasizes moral obligations and duties, and consequentialism assesses the morality of actions based on their outcomes.
For the program evaluation proposal on Mental Health Diversion Programs in the Criminal Justice System, duty ethics emerges as the most suitable ethical approach. Duty ethics, or Kantian ethics, highlights the importance of adhering to moral obligations and responsibilities regardless of the consequences (McDavid et al., 2019). In the context of criminal justice, duty ethics underscores the significance of upholding ethical principles, respecting individual rights, and ensuring fairness in the evaluation process. This ethical approach aligns with the values of justice, integrity, and respect that are essential in evaluating programs that impact vulnerable populations within the criminal justice system.
Moreover, duty ethics is well-suited for the criminal justice system as a whole due to its emphasis on moral duties and obligations. In this context, where decisions can have profound impacts on individuals’ lives and rights, duty ethics provides a principled framework for ethical decision-making. Evaluators in the criminal justice field are tasked with safeguarding the rights of participants, ensuring impartiality, and upholding ethical standards throughout the evaluation process. Duty ethics guides evaluators to prioritize ethical considerations, maintain transparency, and act in accordance with moral principles to promote fairness and justice.
While deontological ethics, duty ethics, and consequentialism are valuable ethical systems, virtue ethics can also be a compelling approach for criminal justice and program evaluation proposals. Virtue ethics focuses on developing moral character and virtues such as honesty, compassion, and integrity (Hursthouse, 2013). By embodying these virtues, evaluators can cultivate ethical behavior, promote the well-being of participants, and ensure the integrity of the evaluation process in alignment with the values of the criminal justice system.
In conclusion, duty ethics is the most appropriate ethical approach for the program evaluation proposal on Mental Health Diversion Programs in the Criminal Justice System and for the criminal justice system as a whole. This ethical system underscores the importance of moral duties, responsibilities, and ethical principles, guiding evaluators to conduct evaluations with integrity, fairness, and respect for all individuals involved.
References
Hursthouse, R. (2013). Virtue ethics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/Links to an external site.
McDavid, J. C., Huse, I., & Hawthorn, L. R. L. (2019). Program evaluation and performance measurement: An introduction to practice. SAGE Publications.
Peer 2.
