Sanja Kutnjak Ivković

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.

The Bosnian Police and Police Integrity A Continuing Story

The international community has invested considerable resources in reforming the police in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). This paper develops a typology of integrity problems in the BiH and measures the level of integrity among the police in the Sarajevo canton. The typology consists of six forms of police misconduct; it suggests the presence of serious and pervasive integrity problems. In 2003, 451 police officers evaluated nine scenarios describing police corruption and one describing the use of excessive force. Police officers’ evaluations of the seriousness of the police misconduct illustrated by these scenarios were directly related to their opinions about appropriate discipline. The results also indicate that the code of silence provides stronger protection for the acceptance of gratuities and use of excessive force than for opportunistic thefts and shakedowns.

The police code of silence and different paths towards democratic policing

We study the contours of the code of silence among the police in two Eastern-European countries (the Czech Republic (CR) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)). These two countries have experienced relatively recent, but dramatically different paths towards democratisation of the police. We surveyed 604 Czech police officers and 451 officers in BiH regarding their willingness to report misconduct and expectations about the willingness of fellow officers to report misconduct. The results indicate that, although the code of silence is present among supervisors and line officers in both countries, the code is stronger among line officers than among supervisors. In addition, it appears that officers and supervisors in both countries have a good grasp of the extent of protection the code will actually provide. We also report that the code is more homogeneous among the line officers and supervisors in BiH than in the CR, and that tolerance of the use of excessive force is stronger in Bi than in the CR. Both of these...We study the contours of the code of silence among the police in two Eastern-European countries (the Czech Republic (CR) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)). These two countries have experienced relatively recent, but dramatically different paths towards democratisation of the police. We surveyed 604 Czech police officers and 451 officers in BiH regarding their willingness to report misconduct and expectations about the willingness of fellow officers to report misconduct. The results indicate that, although the code of silence is present among supervisors and line officers in both countries, the code is stronger among line officers than among supervisors. In addition, it appears that officers and supervisors in both countries have a good grasp of the extent of protection the code will actually provide. We also report that the code is more homogeneous among the line officers and supervisors in BiH than in the CR, and that tolerance of the use of excessive force is stronger in Bi than in the CR. Both of these findings may be explained by the recent war in BiH that created unique challenges for democratisation of the police.

The code of silence and disciplinary fairness: A comparison of Czech police supervisor and line officer views

Purpose – This paper aims to explore how police officer rank affects the relation between the extent of the code of silence and views of discipline fairness.Design/methodology/approach – In 2005, 150 police supervisors and 450 line officers from East Bohemia, the Czech Republic were surveyed, regarding crucial components of police integrity.Findings – Supervisor and line officer codes of silence are similar; whenever the codes differ, the supervisor code seems to be narrower. The majority of line officers and supervisors provided similar assessments of the expected discipline; they disagreed only regarding a small number of scenarios. The results clearly show a direct relation between how strongly police officers adhere to the code of silence and the way they view disciplinary fairness, regardless of their supervisory status.Research limitations/implications – The survey included only police officers from East Bohemia in the Czech Republic.Practical implications – The methodology can be utilized by police...

The Contours of Police Integrity Across Eastern Europe: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Czech Republic

We study the integrity contours of two police in Eastern Europe that have experienced dramatically different democratic transitions. The democratic transition and reform of the police in the Czech Republic was largely self-imposed and occurred with relatively low levels of violence. Conversely, the experience in Bosnia and Herzegovina involved a war resulting in outside intervention and reform efforts orchestrated by the international community. The goal of this article is not only to review reforms of the Czech and Bosnian police in the context of and Kutnjak Ivkovićs organizational theory of police integrity but also to empirically measure the extent of integrity among the police in both countries. We survey 604 Czech police officers and 451 Bosnian police officers regarding their opinions about the seriousness of police corruption, the appropriate punishment such misconduct deserves and would receive, and their willingness to report misconduct.

War Crimes, Democracy, and the Rule of Law in Belgrade, the Former Yugoslavia, and Beyond

The creation and operation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is an advance in the rule of law and arguably part of a larger process of the globalization of democratic norms. Yet support for the ICTY is increasingly influenced by local processes in which these norms are contested by indigenous parties and forces. We explore this issue with regard to support of Serbs living in and outside of Serbia for the ICTY in comparison to local courts. Serbs in Belgrade are distinctive in insisting that war criminals be tried in their places of origin, while Serbs in Sarajevo and Vukovar agree with other groups in these settings that war criminals should be tried in the locations where their crimes occurred. This is compelling evidence of the localized influence of cultural norms on ethnic and national group members in post-war crime settings.

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.

The Normative Order of Reporting Police Misconduct: Examining the Roles of Offense Seriousness, Legitimacy, and Fairness

Using anonymous surveys of 3,235 officers in 30 police agencies, we tested hypotheses derived from prior policing research, legitimacy theory, and disciplinary fairness literature on the intentions of police officers to report acts of misconduct perpetrated by fellow officers. We examined features of the normative order involving peer reporting of police misconduct at both the individual agency and aggregate police subculture levels. Consistent with previous research, the perceived seriousness of the offense and legitimacy (endorsement) are consistently strong predictors of officers’ intentions to report misconduct. We also find that perceived fairness of discipline provides significant results, but the direction of the relationship depends on the perceived seriousness of the offense. It is clear that the majority of police officers participate in a shared normative culture of when to and when not to report misconduct. Finally, we note the importance of studying the reporting of police misconduct using a social psychological lens.

Police Integrity in South Korea

South Korea is an Asian democracy with the history of military and autocratic regimes. The police served the regimes and engaged in various forms of police misconduct, from the use of excessive force and violation of human rights to corruption. Recent reforms of the South Korean police primarily targeted police corruption and mostly neglected the use of excessive force. This chapter presents the results of the 2009 police integrity survey of 379 South Korean police officers. The respondents had no problems recognizing most of the behaviors described in the questionnaire as rule violating. The instances in which they had problems were mostly focused on the scenarios describing the use of excessive force. The respondents evaluated most of the scenarios as serious. They also expected, and approved of, some discipline milder than dismissal for such behavior. We uncovered a strong code of silence among our respondents that protects not only violations of official rules but also violations of criminal law. Our results indicate that the respondents’ own views about the described behavior and their estimates of how others would evaluate the same behavior are very similar. We argue that these results should be interpreted in light of the Confucianism and the collective culture of homogeneity widespread in South Korea.

Rainless West: The Integrity Survey’s Role in Agency Accountability

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.