Alasdair MacIntyre’s challenge: Police corruption, management ethics, and the indispensable virtues of integrity and constancy
| Author | David Loomis,Steven Loomis |
| DOI | 10.1177/1461355720909405 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Alasdair MacIntyre’s challenge:
Police corruption, management ethics,
and the indispensable virtues
of integrity and constancy
David Loomis
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, USA
Steven Loomis
Wheaton College, USA
Abstract
This paper investigates some of the information conditions necessary for the preservation of police officers’ individual and
collective moral agency, particularly the virtues of integrity and constancy, which can diminish in markedly rule-based,
informationally impove rished, or corrupt work enviro nments. We focus on one particula r work from philosopher
Alasdair MacIntyre, who explores the threat of social s tructures to moral agency by using the hypothetical case of
Jwhose job it was to make the trains run on time while avoiding questions about the cargo. J’s supervisors and the
broader social structure he occupies inhibited his capacity to be a full moral agent. In order to illustrate the relevance and
application of MacIntyre’s argument to policing and the good justice, including the wider philosophical and economic
problems of compartmentalization of moral agency, we draw from his framework to consider our own case study in
policing inspired by a challenging era within the recent history of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (USA).
Implications for leadership and management in policing are discussed.
Keywords
Alasdair MacIntyre, management ethics, police corruption, moral and intellectual virtues, institutional theory, Los Angeles
County Sheriff’s Department
Submitted 05 Sep 2019, Revise received 21 Nov 2019, accepted 30 Jan 2020
Introduction: Social structures, rules,
information, and ethics
It is a well-known fact,
1
at least since Sir Robert Peel’s
Metropolitan Police Act (1829), that the integrity and pro-
fessionalism of line police officers is vital to the legitimacy
of a police agency and its mission (Tyler, 2004). Legiti-
macy is a form of warranted validity; it arises when people
within a defined jurisdiction recognize and grant ongoing
regulative authority over specified areas of individual and
collective activity. Although Max Weber’s (1964) classic
account of the relationship between legitimacy and author-
ity (legal, traditional, and charismatic) lurks behind
discussions of social structures and the moral agency of
people within them, we are going to focus on the philoso-
phical and economic side of the investigation. The demo-
cratic form of government legitimacy and the “status
function” (Searle, 1995, 2010) of certain organizations like
law enforcement agencies (LEA) are usually derivatives of
recognition and authority bestowed from the collective
Corresponding author:
David Loomis, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Monterey Park,
CA, USA.
Email: dloomis@protonmail.com
International Journalof
Police Science & Management
2020, Vol. 22(4) 325–342
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1461355720909405
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agency of citizens of a nation-state, “we the people” in
American parlance. When line police officers and sheriff’s
deputies usurp the boundaries of their constituted authority,
act without integrity and professionalism, and even more
basically, act without intellectual or moral virtue,
2
the pub-
lic may withdraw support and that LEA (or parts of it)
begins to suffer a crisis of legitimacy.
Much of the attention on police misconduct has been on
the line police officer. What of the integrity of a police
agency’s mid-level and executive management? What hap-
pens to an LEA’s moral, social, and political legitimacy
when senior leaders trade off integrity and professionalism
for corrupt
3
practices and forms of power? What are the
subtle ethical dimensions in such social orders for line police
officers in resisting the corruptin g practices and philoso-
phies of unethical leaders? We believe these to be important
and pressing concerns and we borrow from the pre scient
work of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre to address them.
A note of caution, however. Our argument would be
misunderstood if the above questions were somehow inter-
preted as being reducible to narrower questions related to
the so-called “blue code” and the activity of whistleblow-
ing or “snitching” within police culture (for a fine essay on
these areas, see Miller, 2010). Instead, our paper discusses
particular virtues necessary for police practice in pursuing a
complex good like justice,
4
the absence of which nega-
tively impacts the ethics of police practice (including its
management), and affects the status function of an organi-
zation and the broader institution to which it belongs (see
Hodgson, 2006: 10; North, 1990: 3; Searle, 1997: 454–
458).
5
To do that, we want to understand some of the
deeper ontological issues involved in the collapse of ethical
practice. We know, for example, that institutions and orga-
nizations constrain or enable behavior ( Hodgson, 2006).
The constraining or enabling functions are achieved
through formal and informal rules. As Elinor Ostrom
(1986: 6–7) notes,
[r]ules are the means by which we intervene to change the
structure of incentives in [organizational] situations ...Instead
of viewing rules as directly affecting behavior, I view rules as
directly affecting the structure of a situation in which actions
are selected .... Viewing rules as directly affecting the struc-
ture of a situation, rather than as [only] directly producing
behavior, is a subtle but extremely important distinction.
When the formal or informal rule, functioning as a sig-
naling device and incentive for the choice of actions, is
incongruent with the normative nature of the public good
being pursued by a practice, then an inevitable cost is
levied against that professional guild’s modes of practice,
assuming these are aligned with the good, but also on the
individuals practicing the vital ethical virtues identified by
MacIntyre and discussed in this paper. What is important to
recognize is that the scale of that cost, of course, is deter-
mined by the total interaction—individually and collec-
tively—with the new set of rules and their respective
incentives (rewards, penalties, and monitoring or enforce-
ment devices) and channels of information. Integrity
mechanisms (Miller, 2010), such as inspectors general or
internal affairs departme nts, are delayed, neutralize d, or
otherwise largely ineffective when the management struc-
ture has effectively been captured in this way. (The County
of Los Angeles took years before they began to oppose the
mismanagement and corruption of LA Sheri ff Lee Baca
and his Undersheriff Paul Tanaka. It was not until the
County of Los Angeles’ “Report of the Citizens’ Commis-
sion on Jail Violence” (Baird et al., 2012) that investiga-
tions and reforms ramped up.) The organization itself may
be said to be in crisis (Hwang and Lichtenthal, 2000), be
mismanaged (Wright, 1999), or even be corrupt (cf. Gian-
netti, 2003). And when many such organizations are in this
fix, the wider institution itself falls into a “status function”
crisis (Searle, 1995, 2010).
The hypothetical case below was inspired by a crisis of
legitimacy within the largest s heriff’s department in the
United States, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Depart-
ment. It was a crisis that evolved over time, but accelerated
in the 2000s during the rapid promotions received by the
new undersheriff (Hwang and Lichtenthal, 2000). We
begin with a story and then discuss implications for preser-
ving moral agency within wayward and warped police
organizations. This is known as MacIntyre’s challenge.
A quick note about Alasdair MacIntyre’s thought. As a
moral philosopher, MacIntyre’s publishing portfolio is long
and voluminous. We focus on a particularly interesting talk
he gave to the Royal Institute of Philosophy (UK), later
published as a paper entitled, “Social Structures and Their
Threats to Moral Agency” (1999). This was no obscure talk
given by MacIntyre. Like the annual JohnDewey lecture for
the American Philosophy Association or Scotland’s Lord
Adam Gifford lectures (which MacIntyre also gave), the
annual Royal Institute of Philosophy lecture is a prestigious
talk given by a “philosopher of international standing”. The
topic of MacIntyre’s lecture is of profound importance for
organizational and institutional theory, and reflects the full
maturity of his ethical thought. Briefly, MacIntyre argues
that social structures (e.g., organizations, or an institution)
can compel a trade-off or compartmentalization of people’s
ethical commitments and responsibilities, e.g., the practice
of certain virtues, from their professional spheres of life.
Although not all social structures are organizations or insti-
tutions (Hodgson, 2006),we emphasize the social structures
that are organizations or institutions.
In some instances, social structures create what has been
described elsewhere as an “obligation beyond consent”.
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326 International Journal of Police Science & Management 22(4)
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