An empirical test of the influence of society at large on police integrity in a centralized police system

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the theory of police integrity, particularly its fourth dimension, on a centralized police agency and to assess the degree to which levels of police integrity are related to the characteristics of the larger environment. Design/methodology/approach – In 2008, a stratified representative sample of 945 Croatian police officers from ten police administrations evaluated 11 hypothetical scenarios describing a range of various forms of police misconduct. The questionnaire measures officer views regarding scenario seriousness, appropriate and expected discipline, and willingness to report the misconduct. Findings – Bivariate analyses show that police officers’ evaluations of seriousness differed across categories of police administrations for more than one-half of the scenarios. Multivariate analyses reveal that, once organizational predictors are entered into the models, community characteristics remain significant predictors of seriousness evaluations for only a few scenarios. Research limitations/implications – The analytical strategies were limited by the number of police administrations in the country. Practical implications – The results indicate that levels of police integrity in large, centralized organizations vary across units and that the characteristics of the communities the police are a contributing factor to these differences. At the same time, organizational characteristics carry substantial weight. Originality/value – Prior studies of police integrity focussed on the organizational aspects (the first three dimensions of the theory); the present paper extends the literature to ascertain the importance of the larger environment and its characteristics for levels of police integrity (the fourth dimension of the police integrity theory).

The Quagmire that is an Unwillingness to Report: Situating the Code of Silence Within the Chinese Police Context

“…Few studies examine the intersectional nature of organizational, environmental, and individual factors and how each shape police integrity. In fact, across the dozens of studies on police integrity, only a small sample examine these factors through a more nuanced analytical approach (see Ivković, 2012; Ivković, Mraović, & Borovec, 2016b; Ivković, Peacock, & Haberfeld, 2016; Ivković & Sauerman, 2016; Kane & White, 2009; Lobnikar et al, 2016; Pagon, Lobnikar, & Anelj, 2004; Torstensson-Levander & Ekenvall, 2003; Vallmüür, 2016; Wolfe & Piquero, 2011). What follows is a brief overview of the state of research concerning the individual, organizational, and environmental factors.…”

“…For instance, Vallmüür (2016) found that while female officers were more willing to report misconduct, when the behavior related to inappropriate use of force, male officers were more willing to report misconduct involving the misuse of the position for personal gain. Specific to perceptions of seriousness, there is evidence suggesting that female officers tend to view the misconduct described in the scenarios as more serious than male officers (Ivković et al, 2016b; Vallmüür, 2016).…”

“…The relationship between years of service and integrity reveals a positive relationship between years of service and police integrity. More recently, Ivković et al (2016b), surveying 945 Croatian police officers from 10 police administrations, found that officers who have served longer in the police force tend to view misbehaviors as more serious than those with lesser years of experience. In another study examining police integrity among Québec’s police officers, Alain (2004) found that more experienced officers were more likely to report minor misconduct than less experienced officers, although they do not differ in reporting relatively more serious misconduct.…”

“…However, in the body of research on police integrity, much like those studies on police behavior, little attention seems to be given to the influence of environment on decision making. As noted by Ivković et al (2016b), most studies focusing on centralized police systems treat police integrity as monolithic across different units of the systems and pay no attention to the potential variations in police integrity among “different territorial or formation units” (p. 305).…”

“…Despite a limited number of studies examining the relationship between ecological factors and police integrity, those studies examining variations across territorial units or between urban and rural areas within a country provide interesting results. More recently, based on a sample of 945 Croatian police officers from 10 police administrations, Ivković et al (2016b) found that officers from metropolitan police agencies tend to evaluate scenarios of misconduct as less serious than officers from rural police agencies, although the effect of territorial type decreases when organizational predictors are involved. In contrast, in examining police integrity in Armenia, Ivković and Khechumyan (2014) detected that police officers from the capital expected harsher punishment on those engaging in misconduct than their rural counterparts.…”