Carl B. Klockars

The Dirty Harry Problem

Policing constantly places its practitioners in situations in which good ends can be achieved by dirty means. When the ends to be achieved are urgent and unquestionably good and only a dirty means will work to achieve them, the policeman faces a genuine moral dilemma. A genuine moral dilemma is a situation from which one cannot emerge inno cent no matter what one does—employ a dirty means, em ploy an insufficiently dirty means, or walk away. In such situations in policing, Dirty Harry problems, the danger lies not in becoming guilty of wrong—that is inevitable—but in thinking that one has found a way to escape a dilemma which is inescapable. Dire consequences result from this misunder standing. Policemen lose their sense of moral proportion, fail to care, turn cynical, or allow their passionate caring to lead them to employ dirty means too crudely or too readily. The only means of assuring that dirty means will not be used too readily or too crudely is to punish those who use them and the agency which endorses their use.

Enhancing police integrity

The Idea of Police Integrity.- Measuring Police Integrity.- Profiles of Integrity.- The Charleston, South Carolina, Police Department.- The Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, Police Department.- The St. Petersburg, Florida, Police Department.- The Second Survey.- Recruitment, Selection, and Training.- Processing Citizen Complaints.- Meting out the Discipline.- Circumscribing the Code of Silence.- Enhancing Police Integrity.

Controlling Police Corruption: The Croatian Perspective

Political, social, and economic developments in the last decade had potentially both positive and negative impact on the level of police corruption among the Croatian Police, one of the youngest police forces in Europe. In this paper we address crucial issues related to control of corruption by the Croatian Police. We analyze the nature and extent of police corruption and provide a critical evaluation of the recent measures undertaken to control police corruption. In the empirical part of the paper, we rely upon the very few existing corruption-related data sources.

A Minimum Requirement for Police Corruption

Corruption is extremely difficult to study in a direct, quantitative, empirical manner. Because most corruption incidents are never reported or recorded, official data on corruption are better regarded as measures of police agency anti-corruption activity than as measures of the actual level of corruption. Moreover, police officers are unlikely to be willing to candidly report their own or other officers’ corrupt activities, even with assurances of confidentiality by researchers.