Continuum of Police Crime: An Empirical Study of Court Cases (original) (raw)

The great majority of police officers is committed to honorable and competent public service and consistently demonstrates integrity and accountability in carrying out the often difficult, complex and sometimes dangerous, activities involved in policing by consent. However, in every police agency there exists an element of dishonesty, lack of professionalism and criminal behavior. This article is based on archival research of criminal behavior in the Norwegian police force. A total of 60 police employees were prosecuted in court because of misconduct and crime from 2005 to 2010. Court cases were coded as two potential predictors of court sentence in terms of imprisonment days, i.e. type of deviance and level of deviance. Categories of police crime and levels were organized according to a conceptual framework developed for assessing and managing police deviance (Dean, Bell and Lauchs, 2010). Empirical findings support the hypothesis that as the seriousness of police crime increases in breadth and depth so also does the severity of the court sentence as measured by time in prison.