The Measurement of Police Integrity

8/10/2019 The Measurement of Police Integrity

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U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

National Institute of JusticeJulie E. Samuels, Acting Director

continued

The Measurement of Police IntegrityBy Carl B. Klockars, Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, William E. Harver, and Maria R. Haberfeld

May 2000

individual approach, sometimes calledthe bad apple theory of police corrup-tion, has been subject to severe criticismin recent years.

This Research in Brief summarizes astudy that measured police integrity in 30police agencies across the United States.The study was based on an organiza-tional/occupational approach to policecorruption. Researchers asked officersfor their opinions about 11 hypotheticalcases of police misconduct and measuredhow seriously officers regarded policecorruption, how willing they were to sup-port its punishment, and how willing theywere to report it. The survey found sub-stantial differences in the environmentsof integrity among the agencies studied.The more serious the officers considereda behavior to be, the more likely theywere to believe that more severe disci-pline was appropriate, and the more will-ing they were to report a colleague for engaging in that behavior.

Contemporary approachesto corruptionPioneered by Herman Goldstein, 1 con-temporary theories of police corruptionare based on four organizational andoccupational dimensions. Each isdescribed below.

As the history of virtually every policeagency attests, policing is an occupationthat is rife with opportunities for miscon-duct. Policing is a highly discretionary,coercive activity that routinely takesplace in private settings, out of the sightof supervisors, and in the presence of wit-nesses who are often regarded as unreli-able. Corruptionthe abuse of policeauthority for gain is one type of mis-conduct that has been particularly prob-lematic. The difficulties of controllingcorruption can be traced to several fac-tors: the reluctance of police officers to

report corrupt activities by their fellowofficers (also known as The Code, TheCode of Silence, or The Blue Curtain),the reluctance of police administrators toacknowledge the existence of corruptionin their agencies, the benefits of the typi-cal corrupt transaction to the parties in-volved, and the lack of immediate victimswilling to report corruption.

Until recently, police administratorsviewed corruption primarily as a reflec-

tion of the moral defects of individualpolice officers. They fought corruptionby carefully screening applicants for po-lice positions and aggressively pursuingmorally defective officers in an attemptto remove them from their positions be-fore their corrupt behavior had spreadthrough the agency. This administrative/

Issues and FindingsDiscussed in this Brief: Research ex-ploring police officers understanding ofagency rules concerning police miscon-duct and the extent of their support forthese rules. The survey also consideredofficers opinions about appropriate

punishment for misconduct, their famil-iarity with the expected disciplinarythreat, their perceptions of disciplinaryfairness, and their willingness to reportmisconduct. The results of this surveyhave important implications for re-searchers and policymakers, as well asfor police practitioners.

Key issues: Until recently, most stud-ies of police corruption were basedon a traditional administrative ap-proachone that views the problem

of corruption primarily as a reflectionof the moral defects of individual po-lice officers. This research, however, isbased on the organizational theory ofpolice corruption, which emphasizesthe importance of organizational andoccupational culture.

Researchers asked officers in 30 U.S.police agencies for their opinions aboutvarious hypothetical cases of police mis-conduct, thereby avoiding the resis-tance that direct inquiries about corrupt

behavior would likely provoke. The sur-vey measured how seriously officers re-garded police corruption, how willingthey were to report it, and how willingthey were to support punishment. Byanalyzing officers responses to the sur-vey questions, researchers were able torank the police agencies according totheir environments of integrity. The ca-pacity to measure integrity in this way isespecially significant for police adminis-trators, who, this research suggests,may be able to influence and cultivate


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only among police agencies but also within police agencies. Particularly inlarge police agencies, the occupationalculture of integrity may differ substan-tially among precincts, service areas,task forces, and work groups.

Public expectations. The fourth dimen-sion of police corruption that contemporarypolice theory emphasizes is the influenceof the social, economic, and political envi-ronments in which police institutions, sys-tems, and agencies operate. For example,some jurisdictions in the United Stateshave long, virtually uninterrupted tradi-tions of police corruption. Other jurisdic-tions have equally long traditions of minimal corruption, while still others haveexperienced repeated cycles of scandaland reform. Such histories indicate thatpublic expectations about police integrityexert vastly different pressures on policeagencies in different jurisdictions. Theseexperiences also suggest that public pres-sures to confront and combat corruptionmay be successfully resisted.

Methodological challenges to

the study of police corruptionAlthough many theories can be applied tothe study of police corruption, the contem-porary organizational/occupational culturetheory has an important advantage over thetraditional administrative/individual bad-apple theory: The organizational/occupa-tional approach is much more amenableto systematic, quantitative research.

Corruption is extremely difficult to study

in a direct, quantitative, and empiricalmanner. Because most incidents of cor-ruption are never reported or recorded,official data on corruption are best re-garded as measures of a police agencysanticorruption activity, not the actuallevel of corruption. Even with assurancesof confidentiality, police officers are un-

Organizational rules. The first dimen-sion concerns how the organizationalrules that govern corruption are estab-lished, communicated, and understood. Inthe United States, where police agenciesare highly decentralized, police organiza-tions differ markedly in the types of ac-tivities they officially prohibit as corruptbehavior. This is particularly true of mar-ginally corrupt or mala prohibita behav-ior, such as off-duty employment andacceptance of favors, small gifts, freemeals, and discounts. Further complicat-ing the problem, the official policy of many agencies formally prohibits suchactivities while their unofficial policy,

supported firmly but silently by supervi-sors and administrators, is to permit andignore such behavior so long as it is lim-ited in scope and conducted discreetly.

Prevention and control mechanisms.The second dimension of corruption em-phasized in contemporary approaches isthe wide range of mechanisms that policeagencies employ to prevent and controlcorruption. Examples include educationin ethics, proactive and reactive investi-

gation of corruption, integrity testing, andcorruption deterrence through the disci-pline of offenders. The extent to whichagencies use such organizational anticor-ruption techniques varies greatly.

The Code. The third dimension of cor-ruption, inherent in the occupational cul-ture of policing, is The Code or The BlueCurtain that informally prohibits or dis-courages police officers from reporting themisconduct of their colleagues. The pa-

rameters of The Codeprecisely what be-havior it covers and to whom its benefitsare extendedvary among police agen-cies. For example, The Code may apply toonly low-level corruption in some agen-cies and to the most serious corruption inothers. Furthermore, whom and what TheCode covers can vary substantially not

environments of integrity within theiragencies.

Key findings: Based on officersresponses to questions relating to 11hypothetical case scenarios involvingpolice officers engaged in a range ofcorrupt behavior, the following con-clusions emerged:

In assessing the 11 cases of po-lice misconduct, officers consideredsome types to be significantly lessserious than others.

The more serious the officers

perceived a behavior to be, themore likely they were to think thatmore severe discipline was appro-priate, and the more willing theywere to report a colleague whohad engaged in such behavior.

Police officers evaluations of theappropriate and expected disciplinefor various types of misconduct werevery similar; the majority of policeofficers regarded the expected disci-pline as fair.

A majority of police officers saidthat they would not report a fellowofficer who had engaged in whatthey regarded as less serious mis-conduct (for example, operating anoff-duty security business; acceptingfree gifts, meals, and discounts; orhaving a minor accident while driv-ing under the influence of alcohol.

At the same time, most policeofficers indicated that they would

report a colleague who stole froma found wallet or a burglary scene,accepted a bribe or kickback, orused excessive force on a car thiefafter a foot pursuit.

The survey found substantial differ-ences in the environment of integrityamong the 30 agencies in the sample.

Target audience: Criminal justiceresearchers and policymakers, legis-lators, police administrators, policeofficers, and educators.

Issues and Findingscontinued


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responses to the survey questionssuggests that all six integrity-relatedquestions measured the same phe-nomenonthe degree of police intol-erance for corrupt behavior.

Offense seriousness. The 11 casescenarios fall into 3 categories of per-ceived seriousness. Four cases werenot considered very serious by policerespondents: Case 1, off-duty opera-tion of a security system business;Case 2, receipt of free meals; Case 4,receipt of holiday gifts; and Case 8,coverup of a police accident that in-volved driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). The majority of policerespondents, in fact, reported that theoperation of an off-duty security sys-tem business (Case 1) was not a viola-tion of agency policy. Respondentsconsidered four other cases of miscon-duct to be at an intermediate level of seriousness: Case 10, the use of exces-sive force on a car thief following afoot pursuit; Case 7, a supervisor whooffers a subordinate time off duringholidays in exchange for tuning up his

personal car; Case 9, acceptance of free drinks in exchange for ignoringa late bar closing; and Case 6, receiptof a kickback. Respondents regardedthe remaining three casesthose thatinvolved stealing from a found wallet(Case 11), accepting a money bribe(Case 3), and stealing a watch at acrime scene (Case 5)as very seriousoffenses.

Discipline. In general, police officers

thought that the four cases they re-garded as not very serious warrantedlittle or no discipline. Officers thoughtthat the four cases involving an inter-mediate level of seriousness merited awritten reprimand or a period of sus-pension, and that the three very seri-ous cases merited dismissal.

likely to be willing to report their ownor another officers corrupt activities.

Unlike the administrative/individualapproach, an organizational/occupa-

tional culture approach to the study of police integrity involves questions of

fact and opinion that can be exploreddirectly, without arousing the resis-tance that direct inquiries about cor-rupt behavior are likely to provoke.Using this approach, it is possible toask nonthreatening questions aboutofficers knowledge of agency rules andtheir opinions about the seriousness of particular violations, the punishmentthat such violations would warrant or actually receive, and their estimates of how willing officers would be to reportsuch misconduct.

Moreover, sharply different goals andvisions of police integrity characterizethese two approaches to understandingcorruption. The administrative/indi-vidual theory of corruption envisionsthe police agency of integrity as onefrom which all morally defective indi-vidual officers have been removed andin which vigilance is maintained to pre-vent their entry or emergence. By con-trast, the organizational/occupationalculture theory envisions the policeagency of integrity as one whose cultureis highly intolerant of corruption.

Methodologically, the consequences of these two visions are critical. For ex-ample, although it may be possible touse an administrative/individual ap-proach to measure the level of corruptbehavior, the number of morally defec-tive police officers, and an agencysvigilance in discovering misconduct,the obstacles to doing so are enormous.Using an organizational/occupationalculture approach, by contrast, modernsocial science can easily measure how

seriously officers regard misconduct,how amenable they are to supportingpunishment, and how willing they areto tolerate misconduct in silence.

In an effort to measure the occupationalculture of police integrity, a systematic,standardized, and quantitative surveyquestionnaire was designed and pre-tested. The survey sought informationin key areas that constitute the founda-tion of an occupational/organizationalculture theory of police integrity. At thesame time, the survey responses couldbe used to satisfy certain basic informa-tional needs of practical police admin-istration. The survey attempted toanswer the following questions:

Do officers in this agency know therules governing police misconduct?

How strongly do they support thoserules?

Do officers know what disciplinarythreat they face if they violate thoserules?

Do they think the discipline is fair?

How willing are they to reportmisconduct?

For a more detailed description of thesurvey methodology and samples, seeSurvey Design and Methodology. Theactions taken to enhance the legitimacyof the survey results are discussed inValidity of Survey Responses.

Survey results

The results of the survey, reported inexhibit 1, show that the more seriousa particular behavior was consideredby police officers, the more severelythey thought it should and would bepunished, and the more willing theywere to report it. The extraordinarilyhigh rank-order correlation among the


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Survey Design and MethodologyC ase scenarios. The survey ques-tionnaire presented officers with 11 hy-pothetical case scenarios. Displayed inexhibit A, the scenarios cover a range ofactivities, from those that merely give anappearance of conflict of interest (Case 1)to incidents of bribery (Case 3) and theft(Cases 5 and 11). One scenario (Case 10)described the use of excessive force on acar thief.

Respondents were asked to evaluate eachscenario by answering seven questions

Two related to severity of discipline

one addressed the discipline the respon-dent felt the behavior should receiveand the other addressed the disciplinethe officer felt it would receive.

Two concerned willingness to report the misconductone addressed therespondents own willingness toreport it, and the other concernedthe respondents perception of otherofficers willingness to report it.

The remaining question asked respon-

dents whether the behavior describedin the scenario was a violation of theagencys official policy.

The incidents described in the scenarioswere not only plausible and commonforms of police misconduct, but ones thatwere uncomplicated by details that mightintroduce ambiguity into either the inter-pretation of the behavior or the motiveof the officer depicted in the scenario.Some scenarios were based on publishedstudies that had employed a case scenarioapproach. a Others drew on the experienceof the authors. Respondents were askedto assume that the officer depicted in eachscenario had been a police officer for 5years and had a satisfactory work recordwith no history of disciplinary problems.

Survey sample. The sample consisted of3,235 officers from 30 U.S. police agen-cies. Although these agencies were drawnfrom across the Nation and the samplewas quite large, it was nonetheless a con-venience sample, not a representativesample. The characteristics of the officersin this sample are summarized in exhibit C.The majority of the police officers surveyedwere employed in patrol or traffic units(63.1 percent). The overwhelming majorityof respondents were line officers; onlyone of five police officers was a supervisor.The mean length of service for the entiresample was 10.3 years.

(see exhibit B). Six of these questions were de-

signed to assess the normative inclination ofpolice to resist temptations to abuse therights and privileges of their occupation. Tomeasure this dimension of police integrity, thesix questions were paired as follows:

Two questions pertained to the serious-ness of each caseone addressed therespondents own view and the otherconcerned the respondents perceptionof the views of other officers.

Exhibit A. Case scenarios

Case 1. A police officer runs his own private business in which he sells and installs securitydevices, such as alarms, special locks, etc. He does this work during his off-duty hours.

Case 2. A police officer routinely accepts free meals, cigarettes, and other items of small valuefrom merchants on his beat. He does not solicit these gifts and is careful not to abusethe generosity of those who give gifts to him.

Case 3. A police officer stops a motorist for speeding. The officer agrees to accept a personalgift of half of the amount of the fine in exchange for not issuing a citation.

Case 4. A police officer is widely liked in the community, and on holidays local merchants andrestaurant and bar owners show their appreciation for his attention by giving him giftsof food and liquor.

Case 5. A police officer discovers a burglary of a jewelry shop. The display cases are smashed,and it is obvious that many items have been taken. While searching the shop, he takesa watch, worth about 2 days pay for that officer. He reports that the watch had beenstolen during the burglary.

Case 6. A police officer has a private arrangement with a local auto body shop to refer theowners of cars damaged in accidents to the shop. In exchange for each referral,he receives payment of 5 percent of the repair bill from the shop owner.

Case 7. A police officer, who happens to be a very good auto mechanic, is scheduled to workduring coming holidays. A supervisor offers to give him these days off, if he agrees totune up his supervisors personal car. Evaluate the supervisors behavior.

Case 8. At 2:00 a.m., a police officer, who is on duty, is driving his patrol car on a desertedroad. He sees a vehicle that has been driven off the road and is stuck in a ditch. Heapproaches the vehicle and observes that the driver is not hurt but is obviously intoxi-cated. He also finds that the driver is a police officer. Instead of reporting this accidentand offense, he transports the driver to his home.

Case 9. A police officer finds a bar on his beat that is still serving drinks a half-hour past its

legal closing time. Instead of reporting this violation, the police officer agrees toaccept a couple of free drinks from the owner.

Case 10. Two police officers on foot patrol surprise a man who is attempting to break into anautomobile. The man flees. They chase him for about two blocks before apprehendinghim by tackling him and wrestling him to the ground. After he is under control, bothofficers punch him a couple of times in the stomach as punishment for fleeing andresisting.

Case 11. A police officer finds a wallet in a parking lot. It contains an amount of moneyequivalent to a full days pay for that officer. He reports the wallet as lost propertybut keeps the money for himself.


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The sample has some biases, including

overrepresentation of particular types ofpolice agencies and particular regions ofthe country. Because it includes no Statepolice agencies, only one sheriffs agency,and only one county police agency, thesample overrepresents municipal policeagencies. The sample also overrepresentspolice agencies from the Northeast. Al-though the sample does include agenciesfrom the South, Southeast, and Southwest,it does not include agencies from the West,Northwest, or Midwest.

The sample likely has another bias becausenot all agencies that were asked to partici-pate in the study accepted the invitation.The reason for an agencys refusal to par-ticipate could include a fear of revealingsomething untoward. Agencies declinedto participate despite assurances that theirparticipation in the survey would be keptconfidential; that all individual respondentswould remain anonymous; and that re-spondents would be asked about onlytheir opinions, not any actual misconduct.

Nevertheless, the sample includes someseriously troubled police agencies. Keycontacts in a number of such agencies,including senior officers and high-rankingunion officials, exercised sufficient influ-ence to arrange the participation of theseagencies in the survey.

a. A number of studies of police corruptionhave employed a research strategy that askedpolice officers to evaluate hypothetical corrup-tion scenarios. These include Fishman, JanetE., Measuring Police Corruption , New York:John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 1978;

Martin, Christine, Illinois Municipal Officers Perceptions of Police Ethics , Chicago: IllinoisCriminal Justice Information Authority, 1994;Huon, Gail F., Beryl L. Hesketh, Mark G. Frank,Kevin M. McConkey, and G.M. McGrath, Per-ceptions of Ethical Dilemmas , Payneham, Aus-tralia: National Police Research Unit, 1995;and Miller, Larry S., and Michael C. Braswell,Police Perceptions of Ethical Decision-Making: The Ideal vs. The Real, American

Journal of Police 27 (1992): 2745.

Exhibit C. Characteristics of the police agency sample

MeanAgency Size Percentage Percentage Length of(number of of National Sample Supervisory Patrol/ Servicesworn officers) Sample Size Percentage Traffic (in years)

Very Large (500+) 59.9 1,937 14.8 64.2 9.18

Large (201500) 19.7 638 23.2 60.3 12.05

Medium (76200) 9.0 292 29.9 59.0 12.29

Small (2575) 8.5 275 30.8 66.1 11.70

Very Small (


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Validity of Survey Responses

he validity of the surveys results

hinges on the honesty of police officerswhen responding to the survey questions.Several steps were taken to enhance thelegitimacy of the survey results. First, offic-ers were asked only about their attitudes,not about their actual behavior or the ac-tual behavior of other police officers. Theyalso were assured that their responseswould remain confidential, although po-lice respondents are naturally suspicious ofsuch promises.

To further allay officers fears that their

identities might be discovered, they wereasked only minimal background questions:their rank, length of service, and assign-ment and whether they held a supervisoryposition. They were not asked standardquestions about age, race, gender, orethnicity in an effort to assuage fears thatdisclosing such information, in combinationwith their rank, assignment, and length of

service, would make it possible to identify

them.In addition, at the end of the survey,each police respondent was asked twoquestions about the validity of the re-sponses. The first was Do you thinkmost police officers would give theirhonest opinion in filling out this ques-tionnaire? The second was Did you?In answer to the first question, 84.4 per-cent of police respondents reported thatthey thought most officers would an-swer the questions honestly, and 97.8percent reported that they themselveshad done so. The responses of the 2.2percent of police officers who reportedthat they had not answered the ques-tions honestly were discarded when thesurvey results were analyzed.

The survey questions also were designedto minimize any temptation for officers tomanipulate responses to create a favor-able impression on the public or on their

T supervisors. Some officers, for example,might have been inclined to report thatcertain types of misconduct were moreserious than they actually thought themto be. At the same time, however, theseofficers would be unlikely to report thatmisconduct should be punished moreseverely than they thought appropriatebecause of the possibility that they mightone day be subject to such discipline, ifadministrators believed that they wererecommending it.

Furthermore, if any substantial manipula-

tion of answers had occurred, it wouldhave been evident in differences in corre-lation coefficients among the questionsabout seriousness, discipline, and willing-ness to report. In fact, the rank ordercorrelation between all six questions isextraordinarily high. Indeed, one couldpredict with great accuracy the ranking ofa scenario on any one of the six questionsby knowing the ranking for any other.

To measure how officers perceivedthe fairness of discipline, the scoreson the discipline would receivescale were subtracted from the scoreson the discipline should receivescale. A difference of zero was inter-preted to mean that the respondentthought the discipline was fair. If thedifference was greater than zero(positive), the respondent thought thatthe discipline was too lenient. Con-versely, if the difference was lessthan zero (negative), the respondentthought that the discipline was tooharsh. 2 In 7 of the 11 cases, the over-whelming majority of police officersin the sample thought that the disci-pline that would be imposed was inthe fair range. But in the remaining

four cases, including three that offic-ers considered not seriousCase 2(accepting free meals and discountson the beat), Case 4 (accepting holi-day gifts), Case 8 (coverup of policeDUI), and Case 10 (excessive force oncar thief)more than 20 percent of police officers believed that the disci-pline administered by their agencieswould be too harsh.

Parameters of The Code. An exami-

nation of the parameters of The Code of Silence, as revealed in the responses of police officers in the sample, indicatedthat the majority would not report a po-lice colleague who had engaged in be-havior described in the four scenariosconsidered the least serious. At thesame time, a majority indicated that

they would report3

a fellow police of-ficer who had engaged in behavior theydeemed to be at an intermediate or highlevel of seriousness.

Agency contrasts in theculture of integrityMeasurements of the inclination of U.S.police to resist temptations to abuse therights and privileges of their occupationare likely to prove useful for academic,

historical, and cross-cultural studies of police. 4 For police administrators, how-ever, measurements of the culture of in-tegrity of individual police agencies aremore relevant than national averages,which often mask significant differ-ences among agencies.


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Exhibit 1. Police officers perceptions of offense seriousness, appropriate and expected discipline, and willingness toreport, ranked by officers perceptions of case seriousness*

Seriousness Discipline Willingness to ReportOwn View Other Officers Should Receive Would Receive Own View Other Officers

Case Scenario Score Rank Score Rank Score Rank Mode Score Rank Mode Score Rank Score Rank

Case 1. Off-DutySecurity SystemBusiness 1.46 1 1.48 1 1.34 1 None 1.51 1 None 1.37 1 1.46 1Case 2. Free Meals, Verbal VerbalDiscounts on Beat 2.60 2 2.31 2 2.13 2 reprimand 2.37 2 reprimand 1.94 2 1.82 2Case 4. Holiday Gifts Verbal WrittenFrom Merchants 2.84 3 2.64 3 2.53 3 reprimand 2.82 3 reprimand 2.36 4 2.28 3.5Case 8. Coverup of Suspend SuspendPolice DUI Accident 3.03 4 2.86 4 2.81 4 without pay 3.21 4 without pay 2.34 3 2.28 3.5Case 10. Excessive Suspend SuspendForce on Car Thief 4.05 5 3.70 5 3.76 6 without pay 4.00 6 without pay 3.39 5 3.07 5Case 7. Supervisor: Written WrittenHoliday for Tuneup 4.18 6 3.96 6 3.59 5 reprimand 3.43 5 reprimand 3.45 6 3.29 6Case 6. Auto Repair Suspend Suspend

Shop 5% Kickback 4.50 7 4.26 7 4.40 8 without pay 4.46 8 without pay 3.95 8 3.71 8Case 9. Drinks to Suspend SuspendIgnore Late Bar Closing 4.54 8 4.28 8 4.02 7 without pay 4.08 7 without pay 3.73 7 3.47 7Case 11. Theft FromFound Wallet 4.85 9 4.69 9 5.09 10 Dismissal 5.03 10 Dismissal 4.23 10 3.96 10Case 3. Bribe FromSpeeding Motorist 4.92 10 4.81 10 4.92 9 Dismissal 4.86 9 Dismissal 4.19 9 3.92 9Case 5. Crime SceneTheft of Watch 4.95 11 4.88 11 5.66 11 Dismissal 5.57 11 Dismissal 4.54 11 4.34 11

* Scores are based on officers responses to the integrity-related survey questions.

To uncover these differences and allow

comparisons to be made, a system wasdevised for ranking the responses of officers in each agency. To determinean agencys overall ranking on how itsofficers perceived the seriousness of aparticular offense, the mean score of allresponses by officers in that agency toeach of the 11 case scenarios was com-pared to the mean scores of the remain-ing 29 agencies. The agency was thenawarded 3 points if its mean scoreplaced it among the top 10 agencies onany question, 2 points if it scored inthe middle 10, and 1 point if it scoredamong the lowest 10. These scores werethen totaled for all 11 case scenarios.Using this scaling system, an agencysscore on its officers perceptions of theseriousness of the offenses could rangefrom 11 (if it ranked in the lowest third

of agencies on all 11 cases) to 33 (if it

ranked among the highest third of agen-cies on all 11 cases). 5

These summary scores formed the ba-sis for placing agencies in rank order from 1 to 30 (with 1 being the highestintegrity rating), making it possible tosay that an agency ranked n out of 30 in its officers perceptions of of-fense seriousness. This procedure wasused to calculate a summary score andan integrity ranking for each agencys

responses to each of the six questionsabout offense seriousness, disciplinethat should and would be received,and willingness to report the offense.Exhibit 2 summarizes those rankings.

The environment of integrity intwo agencies. To illustrate how envi-

ronments of integrity differ across U.S.

police agencies, it is useful to contrastthe responses of officers from two of the agencies in the sample. Agency 2,which ranked 8th in integrity of the30 agencies surveyed, and Agency 23,which ranked in a 5-way tie for 24thplace, are both large municipal policeagencies. Agency 2 has a national repu-tation for integrity, is extremely recep-tive to research, and is often promotedas a model of innovation. Agency 23has a long history of scandal, and itsreputation as an agency with corruptionproblems persists despite numerous re-form efforts. Although a local newspa-per once dubbed Agency 23 the mostcorrupt police department in the coun-try, six other agencies in the sampleappear to have integrity environmentsthat are as poor or worse.


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In both agencies, the correlation of thescores rank ordering among the catego-ries was very high, as it was for all 30agencies surveyed. For every agency,the mean rank order of officers re-sponses to the six integrity-relatedquestions was nearly identical. Further-more, the rank ordering of the scenariosdiffered little among the agencies.

Although differences in the rank or-dering of the scenarios were minimal,both within and between the two agen-cies, discrepancies in the agenciesabsolute scores reflected significantdifferences (see exhibits 3 and 4).Estimates of offense seriousness wereconsistently higher for Agency 2 thanfor Agency 23. The differences wereespecially large (between 0.5 and 1.0on a 5-point scale) for three scenarios:Case 6 (auto repair shop kickback),Case 9 (drinks to ignore late bar clos-ing), and Case 10 (excessive force oncar thief). Police officers from Agency2 evaluated each of these cases assubstantially more serious than didofficers from Agency 23.

The mean scores for discipline indicatethat, in almost every case, police offic-ers in Agency 2 not only expectedmore severe discipline than did officersin Agency 23, but they also thoughtthat more severe discipline was appro-priate. The differences in perceptionsof discipline were especially great for the most serious types of corruption,such as the scenarios described inCase 3 (bribe from speeding motorist),

Case 5 (crime scene theft of watch),and Case 11 (theft from found wallet),as well as for Case 10 (use of excessiveforce). While officers in Agency 2thought that dismissal would resultfrom the four most serious cases, offic-ers in Agency 23 expected that dis-missal would follow only one scenario,Case 5 (theft from a crime scene).

The most systematic and dramatic dif-ference between Agencies 2 and 23,however, is evident in their attitudestoward The Code of Silence. In bothagencies, few officers said that they or their police colleagues would reportany of the least serious types of cor-rupt behavior (Cases 1, 2, 4, and 8).Officers from Agency 2 reported that

they and their colleagues would reportthe behavior described in the sevenother cases. In Agency 23, however,there was no case that the majority of officers indicated they would report. Insum, while The Code is under controlin Agency 2, it remains a powerful in-fluence in Agency 23, providing anenvironment in which corrupt behavior can flourish.

Exhibit 2. Composite scores on seriousness of offense, discipline, and willingness to report, rank-ordered by agency

Other Other SummaryOwn Officers Discipline Discipline Own Officers Score/

Agency Opinion of Opinions of Should Would Willingness Willingness IntegrityNumber Seriousness Seriousness Receive Receive to Report to Report Ranking

1 3 3 3 3 3 3 18/13 3 3 3 3 3 3 18/14 3 3 3 3 3 3 18/16 3 3 3 3 3 3 18/1

10 3 3 3 3 3 3 18/117 3 3 3 3 3 3 18/130 3 3 3 3 3 3 18/1

2 3 2 3 3 3 3 17/818 2 2 3 3 3 3 16/9

7 3 2 2 2 3 3 15/10

11 3 3 2 2 2 2 14/1112 3 3 3 1 2 2 14/11

5 2 2 2 3 2 2 13/1319 3 2 2 2 2 2 13/1320 3 2 2 2 2 2 13/1329 2 3 2 1 2 2 12/1626 3 2 2 2 1 1 11/1727 2 2 2 1 2 2 11/1724 2 2 1 1 2 2 10/1921 1 1 2 3 1 1 9/2022 1 1 2 2 1 2 9/20

9 2 1 2 1 1 1 8/2216 1 1 1 1 2 2 8/2213 1 2 1 1 1 1 7/2414 1 1 1 2 1 1 7/2415 1 1 1 1 2 1 7/2423 1 1 1 2 1 1 7/2425 1 1 1 2 1 1 7/24

8 1 1 1 1 1 1 6/2928 1 1 1 1 1 1 6/29


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Exhibit 3. Agency 2 vs. Agency 23: Officers own perceptions of seriousness of misconduct, discipline warranted, and willingness to report offense

Agency 2 (A2) vs. Agency 2 (A2) vs. Agency 2 (A2) vs.Agency 23 (A23) Agency 23 (A23) Agency 23 (A23)

Perception of Seriousness Discipline Should Receive Willingness To Report

A2 A23 Difference t test A2 A23 Difference t test A2 A23 Difference t test

Case 1. Off-Duty Security -2.82 -3.60 -4.78System Business 1.57 1.36 0.21 p


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therefore, this survey makes no obser-vation about abuses of discretion in ar-rests, order maintenance, discourtesyto citizens, or other police misconductnot usually motivated by temptationsof gain. A second generation of thissurvey will explore those problems. 6

A final noteThis survey does not measure the ex-tent of corruption in any police agencyor institution. Rather, it measures theculture of police integritythe norma-tive inclination of police officers to re-sist the temptations to abuse the rightsand privileges of their office. The sur-vey does not identify either corrupt or honest police officers; nor does it pro-

vide any evidence of abusive or dishon-est practicespast, present, or future.The survey findings do describe, in afairly precise way, the characteristics of a police agencys culture that encour-age its employees to resist or toleratecertain types of misconduct.

Notes1. Goldstein, Herman, Police Corruption: Per-

spective on Its Nature and Control , Washington,DC: Police Foundation, 1975; and Goldstein,H., Policing a Free Society , Cambridge, MA:Ballinger, 1977. See also Sherman, LawrenceW., Scandal and Reform , Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1978; Marx, Gary, Surveil-lance, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1991; Punch, Maurice, Conduct Unbe-coming: The Social Construction of Police Devi-ance and Control , London: Tavistock, 1986;

and Manning, Peter K., and LawrenceRedlinger, The Invitational Edges of PoliceCorruption, in Thinking About Police , editedby Carl Klockars and Stephen Mastrofski,New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993: 398412.

2. Note that the notions of greater than zero(positive) and less than zero (negative) aremerely shorthand for discipline perceived astoo lenient and too harsh, respectively. In other words, because the data are ordinal, positive or negative differences will not be used in any al-gebraic context. Rather, these differences willbe used solely as indicators to classify respon-dents into three groupsthose who perceivediscipline to be fair, too lenient, or too harsh.

3. The frequency distribution of responses tothe question about officers own willingness toreport a particular offense was analyzed. Thefive-point scale of offered answers ranged from1=definitely not to 5=definitely yes. A cu-mulative frequency above 50 percent for 1 and

Exhibit 4. Agency 2 vs. Agency 23: Officers perceptions of how most police would assess offense seriousness, disciplinethat offense would receive, and whether most police would be willing to report offense

Agency 2 (A2) vs. Agency 2 (A2) vs.Agency 23 (A23) Agency 2 (A2) vs. Agency 23 (A23)How Most Police Agency 23 (A23) Whether Most Police

Regard Seriousness Discipline Would Receive Would Be Willing To ReportA2 A23 Difference t test A2 A23 Difference t test A2 A23 Difference t test

Case 1. Off-Duty Security -1.61 -5.08 -3.12System Business 1.52 1.31 0.21 NS* 1.70 1.33 0.37 p


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The Measurement of Police Integrity

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