Patterns of Police Use of Force as a Measure of Police Integrity (original) (raw)
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DEALING WITH POLICE CORRUPTION
Dealing With Police Corruption, 2018
Police corruption in the United States persists ever more today as a considerable criminal justice issue and can involve the acceptance of gratuities to the more serious form involving brutality and physical abuse. Levels of corruption within a police force vary from only a few unsavory officers to departments that experience systematic corruption that pervades the entire department. This paper defines police corruption, citing examples of such and discusses theories to explain said corruption. This paper will look at internal and external corruption forces at work both internally and externally that promote corruption within. Lastly, this paper will look at the relevance of policy pertinent to police corruption.
Expanding the measurement of police integrity
Purpose -Klockars et al. use scenario methodology to measure perceived seriousness, level of discipline warranted, and willingness to report fellow officers engaged in various negative behaviors. These data are used to characterize the occupational culture of integrity in a given agency, relative to other agencies. What remains unclear is whether these agency-level findings mask important meso-and micro-level variation in the data (i.e. at the precinct/district and officer levels) that may contribute to a more complete understanding of an agency's culture of integrity. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach -This study replicates and extends Klockars et al.'s work using data from a survey administered to 499 Philadelphia police officers, with the goal of both validating their methodological approach and exploring the need for multi-level theory in the study of police integrity. In addition to comparing the results from Philadelphia to those obtained by Klockars et al., the authors test for differences across officer demographics, and explore variance in the willingness to report various behaviors at both the officer-and district-levels. Findings -Results indicate that bivariate relationships between officer-level demographics and willingness to report fellow officers are negated when controlling for theoretically relevant attitudinal variables such as cynicism and, consistent with Klockars et al., perceived seriousness of the underlying behavior. In addition, there is significant district-level variation in the average willingness to report fellow officers, and this variation can be explained by both organizational and environmental variables. On balance, the findings provide support for a multi-level approach to the study of police integrity. Originality/value -While the Klockars et al. approach addresses macro-level variation in police integrity, this study contributes important findings at the meso-and micro-levels.
Policing is a global practice, underpinned by legitimacy, law and public policy. Yet it is not transparent and it is not the same everywhere. It is supported by and reproduced through cultures of policing. These ‘cultures’ may be effective in helping the police to ‘do the job’ but can also be damaging, perpetuating negative stereotypes, condoning bad practice that may lead to miscarriages of justice, and covering up corruption. I
Police officer integrity: a partial replication and extension
Policing: An International Journal, 2016
The purpose of this paper is to partially replicate and extend the work of Klockars et al. and others on police integrity by examining how individual, organizational, and ecological factors affect police supervisors’ perceptions of police misconduct and willingness to report fellow officers’ misconduct. Surveys containing 17 scenarios developed by Klockars et al. (2000, 2004, 2006) were administered to 553 ranking officers employed by municipal police departments, county sheriff’s departments, and constable agencies who were attending training at the Bill Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas from June 1, 2009 to March 1, 2010. Results suggest individual and organizational factors affect supervisor willingness to blow the whistle on underling misconduct, although their effects varied by seriousness of the behavior.
Police integrity and the perceived effectiveness of policing
2019
Research on police integrity has focused to a large extent on the assessment of the seriousness of various forms of police misconduct. Employing vignettes cases it has been shown that police officers identify clear differences among forms of misconduct and these differences largely hold across countries and contexts. Moreover, the impact of a range of individual and organizational characteristics on the assessment of misbehavior has been established. This chapter analyzes the impact of perceptions of the institutional environment and police effectiveness among Ugandan police officers to assess the external validity of the assessments of the seriousness of misconduct presented in the vignettes. The research focuses on ten aspects of police officers' perceptions of the institutional environment and police effectiveness and shows that the perceptions are strongly interrelated and that they impact on attitudes towards police integrity. Thus, while the vignettes are meant as a tool to reduce subjective biases in the evaluation of police misbehavior, the assessment of the vignettes is not free of individual perceptions. This suggests that the vignettes can be seen as means to channel and represent the individual subjective biases in a coherent and comparable form.
Police Corruption: A Perspective on its Nature and Control
Police corruption is an international problem that poses challenges to good governance and the fight against crime, violence and effective protection of property. The police force is one of the most important institutions in a society that is entrusted with upholding law and order and protecting property. When police are linked with corruption, the trust for the institution is undermined and effective fight against organized crime, human trafficking, arms smuggling, and protection of individual life and property is jeopardized. This article examines the causes and impacts of police corruption and means and ways of curbing it.
Corruption is a social phenomenon taking place in every society. There is no society totally free from corruption. Basically, corruption is understood as abuse of power, using the authority derived from being in office or having a job within the apparatus of the state to bring about certain personal gains. However, as corruption becomes a political tool, it is easy to confuse it with mismanagement, unethical behavior, incompetence or neglect of due responsibilities. In general, having a deep personal sense of pride, reasonable remuneration, appropriate working and living conditions can curtail the tendencies to be corrupt. In the specific role of policing, the law enforcement institutions, police in particular, can be prone to corruption. One reason is because corruption is also a manifest of power being purchased for the sake of avoiding duties enshrined in law. To a large extent, curbing police corruption is possible as long as the factors mentioned above are integrated into the strategic moves to eradicate or minimise corruption in the police force. There is, however, the need to observe certain important trends in police corruption, namely the corruption practice at individual level and the corruption practice as an internal network. Furthermore, the strategic approach to curb police corruption needs to be ongoing in nature because one of the underlying causes of police corruption is the very nature of policing work.