Analysis of Work Environment
Professional issues
According to Gregory (2010), the professional roles of a parole officer are to manage the cases of clients with different health issues. A study by Gregory (2010) established that professionalism entails the supervision of clients to ensure public safety. The professional parole officer dealing with offenders in the community using specialized knowledge and skills. The profession entails a parole officer to be honest, true to his work, committed, ethical, and altruistic, and must show intellect and responsibility when on duty (Petersilia, 2001). Petersilia (2001) argues that a professional must honestly deal with clients with unselfishness and develop a positive attitude based on professional motivational qualifiers, which support the basic tenets of the professional code of ethics in writing professionally, qualified reports on offenders to ensure their safe return to the community.
Reporting relationships
According to Gregory (2010), the professional code of ethics and the issues to address, including reviewing cases by meticulously collecting information from clients, providing specialized reports about the offenders, conducting risk assessments, integrating behavior and attitude change programs to protect citizens, liaising with victims of serious crimes, managing approved premises, and ensuring that community order is enforced through the courts (Petersilia, 2001). The officers work with the following members:
- Mental health staff-The staff of the mental health workers consists of employees who can work and support the services of a parole officer.
- Elders and teachers-teachers are people who have entitled the duty to instill knowledge and learning in the minds of the parolees to enable them to reintegrate into the community.
- Correctional officers-Correctional workers have the responsibility to ensure that the parolees acquire the right skills to integrate and fit into the community, even if their problems are criminal.
- Primary workers-primary workers provide support services to ensure the successful integration of the parolees into the community.
- Social workers-Social workers provide the support services of reintegration of the parolees into the community.
Structure
The parole office is constituted in a manner, which allows the parole officer to communicate with other state officials in different parole divisions. The divisions are classified into different states, which are managed by different officers responsible for legal, investigative, and functional support within the jurisdiction of the departments. The parole officer reports to the departmental heads and is referred to as the field officer. A typical example is the state of California division, which is comprised of Evidence-Based Practices Programs, which include the Ignition Interlock Device Program; Interstate Compact Services; Field Programs; and Special Operations (Schwartz, 2010).
The supervisory roles of the officer include:
- Evaluating the risk exposure to the offender when providing the required specialized support and resources to parolees to help them reform and fit into society.
- Providing professional support to offenders to enable them to comply with the community requirements through capacity building.
- To put in place interventional strategies, which enable the offenders to make positive judgments and positively change their lives.
- To ensure that the conditions of supervision are enforced based on the issuance of citations when the offenders violate certain laws.
Analysis of Ethical Dilemma
The parole officer has professionally entitled the right to disclose certain information as they regard potentially helpful in protecting and restoring the client’s health. On the other hand, ethics requires the officer to weigh between right and wrong or good and evil. The dilemma is to disclose or not to disclose confidential information. Kant’s’ categorical imperatives claim that one should act in a manner that the act becomes a universal law, which results in a greater good or less pain for the others and that provides the basis for the parole officer to make decisions of information confidentiality and disclosure (Bartels & Pizarro, 2011).
Ethical concerns
The ethical concerns when working as a parole officer include confidentiality and privacy of the client information, defamation of character, conflict of interest, boundary interests, fraud, parolee referrals, supervision, service delivery, and practitioner impairment.
Social contexts of moral values, professional ethics, business or practice standards
The moral values are about the good that is expected as an outcome of paroling clients in the community who need the services. According to the context in, which the moral values are applied, when the parolee joins the community with different moral values, the professional parole officer has to take into account the moral values of the client and the community to make decisions on how to integrate the person back to the community (Post, Puchalski & Larson, 2000).
Theories and techniques related to ethics and leadership
The ethical theories include the deontological theory, which focuses on intentions regardless of the outcomes, which from the teleological perspective as the parole officer discloses confidential information about the patient, it does not matter as long as the outcome is regarded as good. Transformational leadership has strong values, which engage people to revalue their decision such as the decision made by the parole officer to disclose the information about the HIV client. Here, the core elements of the leader include core values, what leaders do in the leadership process, discipline, knowledge, and relationships.
Level of congruence of professional ethics
The level of congruence of leadership is based on the contributions ethics makes to professionalism, which results in professional ethics. Ethics provides the basis for the parole officer to decide along what is regarded as the ultimate good and a profession provides the framework of making decisions about a problem, which raises moral issues, which is described as prescriptive professional ethics (Seiter, 2002).
Impact of multicultural diversity
Multicultural diversity implies people with different cultures, which include values, art, beliefs, habits, and customs of groups of people (Seiter, 2002). The groups can be cultural, religious, ethnic, and beliefs. The cultural diversities influence the perceptions, communication styles, the way of people, the values, beliefs, and attitude of clients towards the community, and the parole officer.
Social and cultural issues
The individuals on parole in the above case include people with substance abuse; HIV cases, people with different criminal records, and young people under the parole programs.
Confidentiality
The officer is not entitled to disclose medical history to a third party other than those to whom the information can be disclosed. Confidentiality issues include:
- The contract of duty
- Ethics of duty
- Statutory requirements
- Enforceability
- Scope and limitation
- Consequences of breaching the requirements
- The ethical duties of the parole officer
- Limits of their duty
- Exceptions to duty
- Statutory requirements
- Ethical dilemma on whether the parole should disclose information
Decisions making
Decision-making is influenced by the legal environment consists of the statutory requirements that have to be met to ensure that professional codes of conduct are adhered to according to certain sections of the law and other penal codes (Gregory, 2010). In practice, for instance, the laws, which are under chapter 508 of the Texas Government Code guide how to deal with paroles who belong to the states and those who do not belong to the united states. For example, Kant’s theory requires that a person’s actions should be such that they act to achieve the greatest good of others and minimize pain on the others (Seiter, 2002).
Decision-making process elements
To resolve the ethical issues, the following elements of the decision-making process are crucial. Those elements include:
- Objectivity
- Professional behavior
- Confidentiality
- Professional competence
- Legal requirements on information disclosure
- Disclosures might be required by the following instruments of the law and include:
- Disclosure by statute
Those disclosures include notifications, which are provided by law and various other statutory requirements.
The disclosure can only be sanctioned by a judge or an authorized person and the information to disclose must be under the information disclosure act.
Evaluation of working environment because of legal, ethical, and work practices
Legal requirements on information disclosure
Here, the legal requirements deal with the provision of services, which entails the officers to investigate the cases of parolees who qualify to be released into the community. Also, the officers are bound by the law to examine and determine the offenders under the conviction and adjudication to ensure a smooth transition into society.
References
Bartels, D. M., & Pizarro, D. A. (2011). The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas. Cognition, 121(1), 154-161.
Fraser, A., Gatherer, A., & Bloom, S. (2010). Ethics and values in prison practice. Public health, 124(11), 643-645.
Gregory, M. (2010). Reflection and resistance: Probation practice and the ethic of care. British Journal of Social Work, 40(7), 2274-2290.
Petersilia, J. (2001). Prisoner reentry: Public safety and reintegration challenges. The Prison Journal, 81(3), 360-375.
Post, S. G., Puchalski, C. M., & Larson, D. B. (2000). Physicians and patient spirituality: professional boundaries, competency, and ethics. Annals of internal medicine, 132(7), 578-583.
Schwartz, J. (2010). Do hypothetical imperatives require categorical imperatives?. European Journal of Philosophy, 18(1), 84-107.
Seiter, R. P. (2002). Prisoner reentry and the role of parole officers. Fed. Probation, 66 (2),50.