Law and its enforcement - preface

 Law and Law Enforcement The law itself, and the personnel and processes of law enforcement are among the most interesting and paradoxical c...

 Law and Law Enforcement The law itself, and the personnel and processes of law enforcement are among the most interesting and paradoxical contexts for the use and misuse of deception. On the one hand, they represent the standards of ethics and morality of our society and the rules by which we aim to live. And, their goals are to enforce these standards among our citizens. On the other, they themselves knowingly violate these standards of ethics and morality. The law itself specifically condones actions of law enforcement that it specifically forbids among citizens. In turn, law enforcement personnel employ a wide variety of fundamentally deceptive practices to apprehend those they believe to be guilty of crimes: 

many of these crimes, such as fraud or illegal scams of various sorts, committed through use of the very same types of deception used by law enforcement to apprehend the perpetrators (such as misrepresenting crucial facts, or even one’s identity). The fate of the accused is then contested by prosecutors and defense attorneys. Whether negotiating a plea agreement, arguing trial motions to the judge, or presenting the case to juries, the attorneys may selectively present evidence (lying by omission), and knowingly mislead one another, judges, and juries regarding the nature and import of the evidence: all in an effort to achieve the best legal outcome for the state or the defendant. The pervasive deceptive activities sanctioned by the law itself and entailed in the enforcement of the law raise a number of interesting psychological and ethical issues. 

Does the end of “justice” justify the means of deceptive or unethical practices? Are these practices unethical when serving the legitimate goals of law enforcement? Do deceptive practices actually serve the goals of truth-finding and justice, or do they unavoidably corrupt and misdirect them? Does use of deception by attorneys and law enforcement undermine public trust? Can police officers who routinely lie and deceive to apprehend criminals draw a bright line of distinction when they testify before juries, or does perjury seem like another justifiable means to an end? Does the process of deceiving others inevitably lead to deceiving oneself? Can attorneys maintain an objective view of the evidence when their goal is to convince others of a biased view: sometimes one they know to be false (as when a defense attorney knows his client is actually guilty)? In the end, are those who deceive aware of their deceptions, or have they convinced themselves of the truth of the lies? The culture of law enforcement officers provides an interesting context for examination of these issues. At one level, their training and culture explicitly endorses lying and deception as a necessary means to achieve their goals of apprehending suspects and securing evidence to facilitate their conviction

. Training concerning how to perform tasks such as crisis interventions, undercover work or suspect interrogations not only instructs officers that they can and should lie to suspects and others, but also provides specific deceptive strategies, along with many concrete examples of individual lies to tell: many described in formal and publicly available training manuals. These formalized deceptive strategies are explicitly sanctioned by law, and evolve over time to ensure their continuing acceptability by the courts. Moreover, distinct sets of implicit rules about lying tend to be instilled and normalized within the law enforcement culture, encouraging and sanctioning particular forms of lying under some circumstances, and rewarding the development of deceptive Encyclopedia of Lying and Deception skills and practices. Lying is considered to part of what it takes to “get the job done,” and it is widely believed that one cannot police effectively without well-developed tools of deception. Lying and deception is further encouraged by a culture emphasizing strict control and secrecy,

 and protecting officers from negative consequences for many forms of lying. In contrast, other forms of lying are discouraged and looked down upon: such as committing perjury or fabricating evidence. Officers are expected—by their own institutions and by the public—to draw a bright line of distinction between permissible deceptive practices necessary to enforce the law, apprehend suspects and gather valid evidence versus impermissible contamination or fabrication in collection of evidence or presentations of that evidence to others. But it is all too easy for this line to blur, and for the impermissible forms of deception to be viewed as just another justifiable means to achieve the goal of convicting a suspect the officer believes to be guilty: and some officers do cross this line and commit illegal forms of deception. Many common permissible and impermissible practices can be illustrated through consideration of several widely discussed deceptive practices of law enforcement: undercover operations used to gather evidence or apprehend criminal suspects, snitches used to provide incriminating information against them, interrogation practices intended to elicit their confessions, and misleading evidence and testimony offered to secure convictions.