The ethics of policing currently neglects to provide a framework for analysing the morality of deliberate inactions to prevent harm, even though these are often adopted tactically by police as a means of preventing greater harms. In this paper we argue (a) that police have special moral obligations to prevent harm, grounded both in a contractarian account of police legitimacy and in the interpersonal morality of associations and (b) that police are morally culpable for failures to fulfil these special obligations when these are neither proportionate nor necessary to the prevention of greater crime-related harms. Our claims have implications both for the morality of policing and for its regulation and governance under human rights legislation, which we argue should be reformed so as to recognise police culpability not only for inflictions of harm, but also for failures to prevent it.

警务伦理目前忽略了提供一个框架来分析故意不作为以防止伤害的道德，尽管这些经常被警察在战术上用作防止更大伤害的手段。在本文中，我们认为（a）警察有防止伤害的特殊道德义务，其基础是对警察合法性的契约论解释和协会的人际道德；（b）警察在道德上应为未能履行这些特殊义务负有责任当这些对于预防更大的犯罪相关伤害既不相称也没有必要时。我们的主张对警察的道德以及人权立法下的监管和治理都有影响，我们认为应该对其进行改革，以便承认警察的罪责不仅在于造成伤害，