Police Detectives, Criminal Investigations and Collective Moral Responsibility

Abstract

In this paper my concern is with the collective moral responsibility of criminal investigators for the outcomes of their investigations, bearing in mind that it is important to distinguish collective moral responsibility from, and relate it to, individual moral responsibility. In what sense, if any, are police detectives individually and collectively morally responsible for their success (or, for that matter, their failure) in gathering sufficient evidence to identify, arrest, and charge an offender who has committed a serious crime? Alternatively, in what sense are they morally responsible in cases where they identify, arrest, and charge an innocent person? And in what sense, if any, are police detectives individually and collectively morally responsible for the ultimate outcome of the trial, the finding by the courts of someone they have investigated and charged with a serious crime to be guilty or innocent?

Keywords:

• criminal investigation
• detective
• moral responsibility
• collective responsibility
• chain of responsibility
• institutional responsibility

Notes

1 See Nicholson, Yorkshire Ripper. See also Miller and Gordon, “Crimes against the Person,” 127–32.

2 Here I am assuming, of course, that a crime has been committed, whereas there are investigations that might find no crime to have been committed, or ones undertaken to prevent a crime being committed, e.g., terrorist investigations.

3 Strictly speaking, as already mentioned, my view is that criminal investigators ought to aim at understanding: understanding in the sense of a structured set of mutually supporting “items” of knowledge that can be summarized as the what, who, when, where, how, and why of a crime. Moreover, I assume in this article that propositional knowledge is to be defined as (roughly speaking) true belief with a justification. The definition of knowledge is a matter of ongoing controversy in the philosophical literature. However, this definition (or, at least, sophisticated versions thereof) has been well supported historically and, in any case, suits my purposes here. See Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge and Moser, Knowledge and Evidence for overviews. See also Ichikawa and Steup, “Analysis of Knowledge.” For the need to communicate investigative knowledge in propositional statements, see Miller and Gordon, Investigative Ethics, Chapter 2.

4 See Stelfox, Criminal Investigation.

5 I take it that the investigator, in aiming at knowledge, is necessarily aiming at truth, but truth for which he or she has good and decisive evidence; otherwise the investigator might discover the truth without knowing that he or she has done so.

6 In many jurisdictions it is not up to the investigator to decide whether or not a suspect he has charged with a serious offence should go to trial, this being a matter for the prosecuting authority.

7 Sometimes for the sake of brevity I use the term “knowledge” to mean propositional knowledge, as opposed to knowledge in general. However, context should make this clear.

8 There are various complications here. For example, there are approximations to the truth. Moreover, philosophical theorizing on truth is long-standing, complex, and controversial. See, for example Pitcher, Truth. However, my claims here are familiar ones with widespread, if by no means universal, support.

9 See, for example, Williams, “Deciding to Believe.”

10 See Walker, “Voluntariness of Judgement,” for a related defense of the sort of view I am here espousing.

11 I introduced the notion of joint epistemic action in Miller, “Collective Responsibility and Information and Communication Technology.” See also Miller, “Institutions and Information and Communication Technology.”

12 For a useful collection comprising diverse theories of collective moral responsibility, see French, Midwest Studies in Philosophy.

13 The goal or purpose in question is that of the agent, e.g., by virtue of being appropriately rationally connected to the agent's other goals and beliefs; the goal is not, for example, one implanted in the agent by another agent. So the agent's actions are under his or her control. Moreover, the analysis of responsibility in this sense typically excludes any particular motive for one's end or goal in performing the action; one can be responsible in this sense and have a good, bad, or indifferent motive. It is even conceivable that one did not have any motive but rather just a capricious intention or end.

14 For detailed analyses of the notion of collective moral responsibility in play here, see Miller, “Collective Moral Responsibility” and “Moral Foundations of Social Institutions,” Chapter 4.

15 For detailed analyses of the notions of joint action in play here, see Miller, “Joint Action (a)”; Miller, “Intentions, Ends and Joint Action”; Miller, “Joint Action (b)”; Miller, “Joint Action: The Individual Strikes Back”; and Miller, “Social Action.”

16 There are, of course, a myriad of different possible cases here, including ones in which some of the actions of some of the participants are not known. See Miller, “Joint Action (a)”; Miller, “Intentions, Ends and Joint Action”; Miller, “Joint Action (b)”; Miller, “Joint Action: The Individual Strikes Back”; and Miller, “Moral Foundations of Social Institutions,” Chapter 2, for discussions of various different related cases of joint action.

17 There can, of course, be different degrees of individual responsibility within a group whose members are collectively responsibility, notably if some members have a greater degree of institutional authority than their fellows.

18 See Miller, “Joint Action (a)”; Miller, “Organizations, Agency, and Action”; and Miller, “Teleological Account of Institutions.”

19 It is consistent with these claims that if an individual (or minority) culpably failed to realize their individual end, yet knew that the collective end would nevertheless be realized, then that individual does not share in the collective moral responsibility of the successful outcome, since, for one thing, the individual did not in fact have the collective end. It is also consistent with the claims that if an individual (or minority) culpably failed to realize their individual end in the knowledge that as a consequence of this culpable failure of theirs the collective end would not be realized, then the individual (i) does not have the collective end; and (ii) is individually morally responsible for the collective failure to realize the collective end. So in this case there is no collective moral responsibility for the failure.

20 See Miller, “Collective Moral Responsibility”; and Miller, “Social Norms.”

21 Assuming that there are only two possible verdicts, guilty and innocent, which is not the case in some jurisdictions, e.g., in Scotland.

22 See Miller and Blackler, “Theory of Policing”; Miller, “Police”; Miller and Gordon, “Law, Morality, and Policing”; and Miller and Gordon, “Knowledge, Evidence, and Aims of Investigation.”

23 Chains of institutional and moral responsibility consist of a process in which the completion of one stage institutionally triggers the commencement of the next stage, e.g., arrest is followed either by the suspect being charged or released within a specified time frame.