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This paper explores the evaluations of discipline fairness by 1,006 police officers from different parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Police officers in our 2017 sample were asked to assess the appropriate and expected discipline for police misconduct described in 14 hypothetical scenarios. The majority of the respondents evaluated expected discipline as fair in all the scenarios. There was only one scenario in which a substantial minority of the respondents evaluated the expected discipline as too harsh. The analyses yielded no scenarios in which the respondents assessed the expected discipline as too lenient. Compared to respondents who evaluated discipline as fair, respondents who perceived discipline to be too harsh were more likely to say that they would not report misconduct, but there were no differences in the expressed willingness to report between respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as fair and those who evaluated the expected discipline as too lenient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examines the validity of the police integrity measure created by Klockars et al. (1997, The measurement of police integrity. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice. pp. 65–70; 2006, The Measurement of Police Integrity. Research in Brief. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice: Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Available from: ). Whereas this theoretical and methodological approach has been used by many scholars across the world, there are no systematic assessments of its validity. We primarily investigate the criterion validity by assessing whether the data on police integrity are appropriately correlated with other independent indicators of integrity. We rely on the descriptive statistics from many prior police integrity studies conducted over the last 20 years and on other nation/state level available sources of data (Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, the International Crime Victimization Survey, the World Value Survey, and the World Governance Indicators). We find relatively robust evidence of criterion validity of the measures, although the strength of this relationship varies across criteria. The theoretical, methodological, and policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contains an in-depth exploration of the relation between police code of silence and police assignment. A police integrity survey was used to measure the contours of the code among Croatian patrol officers, detectives, and community-policing officers. Samples of police officers evaluated fourteen hypothetical scenarios describing various forms of police misconduct. Whereas the type of assignment was a weak predictor of the respondents' adherence to the code of silence, the respondents' assessments of misconduct seriousness and expected discipline, as well as perceptions whether other officers would report misconduct, were strong predictors of the respondents' own expressed adherence to the code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests the link between internal procedural justice (fair treatment of police officers by supervisors) and external procedural justice (fair treatment of citizens by police officers), proposed by Van Craen and previously tested only in a few Western democracies and Asian countries. This paper relies on a survey of police officers from Croatia, an East-European country in transition, and expands the model by incorporating the potential effect of the police officers' support for community policing on the fair treatment of citizens. Our model, based on the data from a 2017 survey of 638 Croatian police officers, demonstrated that the latent variable internal procedural justice had a modest, positive association with trust in the public, while the latent variable of community policing values did not have a significant association with trust in the public. The antecedent variable community policing values serves as the model's strongest predictor of external procedural justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The code of silence—the informal prohibition of reporting misconduct by fellow police officers—has long been viewed as a serious obstacle in control of police misconduct and achievement of police accountability. The purpose of this article is to study the key correlates of police officers’ reluctance to report. Relying upon a theory of police integrity and the accompanying methodology to study the code, a police integrity survey was administered in 2013 and 2014 to measure the contours of police integrity among 604 police officers from 11 police agencies located in the Midwest and the East Coast of the United States. The questionnaire contains descriptions of 11 scenarios describing various forms of police misconduct, each followed by seven questions measuring officer views of scenario seriousness, the appropriate and expected discipline, and willingness to report misconduct. Multivariate analyses reveal that the key factor related to the police officers’ reluctance to report is the perception that the other officers would not report. The code is also negatively related to familiarity with the official rules, evaluation of misconduct as serious, and the expectation of harsher discipline. The methodology can be used either by the police agencies themselves or by the civilian oversights to assess the nature and extent of the code in the police agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lecture-oriented teaching is the principal pedagogical technique in college and university classrooms but instructors will sometimes turn to non-lecture techniques in an attempt to provide a more active learning experience. This article describes a mock trial exercise that has been used over several semesters to provide criminal justice students with an active learning experience and increase their understanding of the inquisitorial process in comparison with adversarial proceedings. We provide sufficient detail to allow interested instructors to conduct a similar exercise in their own course. Results of a multi-semester evaluation to assess student perceptions of the exercise show that students expected and found the exercise to be an enjoyable and informative classroom experience that advanced their learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Democratising the South African police became one of the key challenges in the aftermath of the apartheid regime. We explored the contours of police integrity – one of the key elements of democratic policing – within the South African national police service. In 2005, questionnaires containing hypothetical cases of police corruption were collected from 379 police officers from seven provinces and autonomous territories. Compelling evidence was found that the South African Police Service (SAPS) faces severe challenges to its integrity. A non-trivial percentage of respondents did not recognise even the most severe forms of police corruption as violations of official rules. The respondents expected relatively mild discipline to be meted out for some of the most severe violations of official rules. The empirical evidence further indicates that a substantial minority of SAPS supervisors would protect many forms of police corruption from exposure. Moreover, the respondents hired after apartheid expressed attitudes associated with an even lower level of police integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores variations in police integrity between police agencies within a centralized police system. The respondents surveyed in this study are 460 Armenian police officers assigned to work in two large police departments, Yerevan and Lori. Yerevan is the Armenian capital and Lori serves the Lori Region, one of the rural parts of the country. The respondents evaluated 11 hypothetical scenarios describing cases of police misconduct. We found relatively few differences between the police officers serving the capital and police officers assigned to a rural region in their knowledge of official rules, views about misconduct seriousness, views about appropriate discipline, and their expressed willingness to report misconduct. On the other hand, despite identical official rules, we found consistent and large differences in the perceptions of the disciplinary environment prevailing in the two police agencies. Our research expands the existing knowledge of centralized police systems and suggests that, despite many shared features, police agencies within the same system can develop different expectations of integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study seeks to test the capacity to measure individual agency integrity using the theoretical perspective and police integrity instrument developed by Klockars and colleagues. Specifically, sworn officers in a large U.S. municipal law enforcement agency evaluated 11 vignettes describing various forms of police misconduct, from police corruption and the use of excessive force to perjury and planting of evidence. Although our study in Rainless West yields a picture of police integrity that is largely similar to those reported for the three police agencies participating in the study by Klockars and colleagues, we detect substantial differences in the levels of integrity associated with the least serious forms of misconduct. Rainless West offers a lesson for institutions seeking to raise police accountability to explore integrity not only as it applies to the most serious forms of misconduct, but also as it applies to the least serious forms of misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]