Tackling the Moral Risks of Policing

Police officers are vulnerable to a variety of moral risks. The moral risks stem both from officers’ routine duties and their ongoing exposure to critical and traumatic incidents. The moral risks take two paths: risks that lead to emotional and spiritual distress and risks that increase the likelihood of officer misconduct. Furthermore, these risks impact each other. Officers who experience emotional or spiritual distress are more likely to make unethical decisions, and officers who engage in misconduct are more likely to experience emotional and spiritual distress. Many current steps taken to address the moral risks are reactive—they focus on intervention once a problem has been identified. Similarly, efforts to improve officer wellness with a preventative emphasis often fail to adequately address officers’ ethical decision-making and the moral risks that they encounter.