Title: The Measurement of Police Integrity (NCJ 181465).
Series: NIJ Research in Brief
Author: Carl B. Klockars, Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, Willliam E. Harver, and
Maria R. Haberfeld
Published: National Institute of Justice
Subject: Law enforcement, police discipline and misconduct
17 pages
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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
National Institute of Justice

National Institute of Justice
Research in Brief
Julie E. Samuels, Acting Director
May 2000

The Measurement of Police Integrity

By Carl B. Klockars, Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, William E. Harver, and Maria
R. Haberfeld 

--------------------------

Issues and Findings

Discussed in this Brief: Research exploring police officers' understanding of
agency rules concerning police misconduct and the extent of their support for
these rules. The survey also considered officers' opinions about appropriate
punishment for misconduct, their familiarity with the expected disciplinary threat,
their perceptions of disciplinary fairness, and their willingness to report
misconduct. The results of this survey have important implications for
researchers and policymakers, as well as for police practitioners. 

Key issues: Until recently, most studies of police corruption were based on a
traditional administrative approach--one that views the problem of corruption
primarily as a reflection of the moral defects of individual police officers. This
research, however, is based on the organizational theory of police corruption,
which emphasizes the importance of organizational and occupational culture. 

Researchers asked officers in 30 U.S. police agencies for their opinions about
various hypothetical cases of police misconduct, thereby avoiding the resistance
that direct inquiries about corrupt behavior would likely provoke. The survey
measured how seriously officers regarded police corruption, how willing they
were to report it, and how willing they were to support punishment. By
analyzing officers' responses to the survey questions, researchers were able to
rank the police agencies according to their environments of integrity. The
capacity to measure integrity in this way is especially significant for police
administrators, who, this research suggests, may be able to influence and
cultivate environments of integrity within their agencies. 

Key findings: Based on officers' responses to questions relating to 11
hypothetical case scenarios involving police officers engaged in a range of
corrupt behavior, the following conclusions emerged: 

--In assessing the 11 cases of police misconduct, officers considered some
types to be significantly less serious than others.

--The more serious the officers perceived a behavior to be, the more likely they
were to think that more severe discipline was appropriate, and the more willing
they were to report a colleague who had engaged in such behavior.

--Police officers' evaluations of the appropriate and expected discipline for
various types of misconduct were very similar; the majority of police officers
regarded the expected discipline as fair. 

--A majority of police officers said that they would not report a fellow officer
who had engaged in what they regarded as less serious misconduct (for
example, operating an off-duty security business; accepting free gifts, meals,
and discounts; or having a minor accident while driving under the influence of
alcohol.

--At the same time, most police officers indicated that they would report a
colleague who stole from a found wallet or a burglary scene, accepted a bribe
or kickback, or used excessive force on a car thief after a foot pursuit.

--The survey found substantial differences in the environment of integrity among
the 30 agencies in the sample.

Target audience: Criminal justice researchers and policymakers, legislators,
police administrators, police officers, and educators. 

--------------------------

As the history of virtually every police agency attests, policing is an occupation
that is rife with opportunities for misconduct. Policing is a highly discretionary,
coercive activity that routinely takes place in private settings, out of the sight of
supervisors, and in the presence of witnesses who are often regarded as
unreliable. Corruption--the abuse of police authority for gain--is one type of
misconduct that has been particularly problematic. The difficulties of controlling
corruption can be traced to several factors: the reluctance of police officers to
report corrupt activities by their fellow officers (also known as "The Code,"
"The Code of Silence," or "The Blue Curtain"), the reluctance of police
administrators to acknowledge the existence of corruption in their agencies, the
benefits of the typical corrupt transaction to the parties involved, and the lack of
immediate victims willing to report corruption.

Until recently, police administrators viewed corruption primarily as a reflection
of the moral defects of individual police officers. They fought corruption by
carefully screening applicants for police positions and aggressively pursuing
morally defective officers in an attempt to remove them from their positions
before their corrupt behavior had spread through the agency. This
administrative/individual approach, sometimes called the "bad apple" theory of
police corruption, has been subject to severe criticism in recent years.

This Research in Brief summarizes a study that measured police integrity in 30
police agencies across the United States. The study was based on an
organizational/occupational approach to police corruption. Researchers asked
officers for their opinions about 11 hypothetical cases of police misconduct and
measured how seriously officers regarded police corruption, how willing they
were to support its punishment, and how willing they were to report it. The
survey found substantial differences in the environments of integrity among the
agencies studied. The more serious the officers considered a behavior to be, the
more likely they were to believe that more severe discipline was appropriate,
and the more willing they were to report a colleague for engaging in that
behavior.

Contemporary approaches to corruption

Pioneered by Herman Goldstein,[1] contemporary theories of police corruption
are based on four organizational and occupational dimensions. Each is
described below. 

Organizational rules. The first dimension concerns how the organizational rules
that govern corruption are established, communicated, and understood. In the
United States, where police agencies are highly decentralized, police
organizations differ markedly in the types of activities they officially prohibit as
corrupt behavior. This is particularly true of marginally corrupt or mala prohibita
behavior, such as off-duty employment and acceptance of favors, small gifts,
free meals, and discounts. Further complicating the problem, the official policy
of many agencies formally prohibits such activities while their unofficial policy,
supported firmly but silently by supervisors and administrators, is to permit and
ignore such behavior so long as it is limited in scope and conducted discreetly.

Prevention and control mechanisms. The second dimension of corruption
emphasized in contemporary approaches is the wide range of mechanisms that
police agencies employ to prevent and control corruption. Examples include
education in ethics, proactive and reactive investigation of corruption, integrity
testing, and corruption deterrence through the discipline of offenders. The
extent to which agencies use such organizational anticorruption techniques
varies greatly.

The Code. The third dimension of corruption, inherent in the occupational
culture of policing, is The Code or The Blue Curtain that informally prohibits or
discourages police officers from reporting the misconduct of their colleagues.
The parameters of The Code--precisely what behavior it covers and to whom
its benefits are extended--vary among police agencies. For example, The Code
may apply to only low-level corruption in some agencies and to the most
serious corruption in others. Furthermore, whom and what The Code covers
can vary substantially not only among police agencies but also within police
agencies. Particularly in large police agencies, the occupational culture of
integrity may differ substantially among precincts, service areas, task forces,
and work groups. 

Public expectations. The fourth dimension of police corruption that
contemporary police theory emphasizes is the influence of the social, economic,
and political environments in which police institutions, systems, and agencies
operate. For example, some jurisdictions in the United States have long,
virtually uninterrupted traditions of police corruption. Other jurisdictions have
equally long traditions of minimal corruption, while still others have experienced
repeated cycles of scandal and reform. Such histories indicate that public
expectations about police integrity exert vastly different pressures on police
agencies in different jurisdictions. These experiences also suggest that public
pressures to confront and combat corruption may be successfully resisted.

Methodological challenges to the study of police corruption

Although many theories can be applied to the study of police corruption, the
contemporary organizational/occupational culture theory has an important
advantage over the traditional administrative/individual bad-apple theory: The
organizational/occupational approach is much more amenable to systematic,
quantitative research.

Corruption is extremely difficult to study in a direct, quantitative, and empirical
manner. Because most incidents of corruption are never reported or recorded,
official data on corruption are best regarded as measures of a police agency's
anticorruption activity, not the actual level of corruption. Even with assurances
of confidentiality, police officers are unlikely to be willing to report their own or
another officer's corrupt activities. 

Unlike the administrative/individual approach, an organizational/occupational
culture approach to the study of police integrity involves questions of fact and
opinion that can be explored directly, without arousing the resistance that direct
inquiries about corrupt behavior are likely to provoke. Using this approach, it is
possible to ask nonthreatening questions about officers' knowledge of agency
rules and their opinions about the seriousness of particular violations, the
punishment that such violations would warrant or actually receive, and their
estimates of how willing officers would be to report such misconduct. 

Moreover, sharply different goals and visions of police integrity characterize
these two approaches to understanding corruption. The administrative/individual
theory of corruption envisions the police agency of integrity as one from which
all morally defective individual officers have been removed and in which
vigilance is maintained to prevent their entry or emergence. By contrast, the
organizational/occupational culture theory envisions the police agency of
integrity as one whose culture is highly intolerant of corruption.

Methodologically, the consequences of these two visions are critical. For
example, although it may be possible to use an administrative/individual
approach to measure the level of corrupt behavior, the number of morally
defective police officers, and an agency's vigilance in discovering misconduct,
the obstacles to doing so are enormous. Using an organizational/occupational
culture approach, by contrast, modern social science can easily measure how
seriously officers regard misconduct, how amenable they are to supporting
punishment, and how willing they are to tolerate misconduct in silence. 

In an effort to measure the occupational culture of police integrity, a systematic,
standardized, and quantitative survey questionnaire was designed and
pretested. The survey sought information in key areas that constitute the
foundation of an occupational/organizational culture theory of police integrity.
At the same time, the survey responses could be used to satisfy certain basic
informational needs of practical police administration. The survey attempted to
answer the following questions:

--Do officers in this agency know the rules governing police misconduct?

--How strongly do they support those rules?

--Do officers know what disciplinary threat they face if they violate those rules? 

--Do they think the discipline is fair? 

--How willing are they to report misconduct?

For a more detailed description of the survey methodology and samples, see
Survey Design and Methodology. The actions taken to enhance the legitimacy
of the survey results are discussed in Validity of Survey Responses. 

Survey results

The results of the survey, reported in exhibit 1, show that the more serious a
particular behavior was considered by police officers, the more severely they
thought it should and would be punished, and the more willing they were to
report it. The extraordinarily high rank-order correlation among the responses
to the survey questions suggests that all six integrity-related questions measured
the same phenomenon--the degree of police intolerance for corrupt behavior. 

Offense seriousness. The 11 case scenarios fall into 3 categories of perceived
seriousness. Four cases were not considered very serious by police
respondents: Case 1, off-duty operation 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 involved driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). The
majority of police respondents, in fact, reported that the operation of an
off-duty security system business (Case 1) was not a violation of agency policy.
Respondents considered four other cases of misconduct to be at an
intermediate level of seriousness: Case 10, the use of excessive force on a car
thief following a foot pursuit; Case 7, a supervisor who offers a subordinate
time off during holidays in exchange for tuning up his personal car; Case 9,
acceptance of free drinks in exchange for ignoring a late bar closing; and Case
6, receipt of a kickback. Respondents regarded the remaining three cases--
those that involved stealing from a found wallet (Case 11), accepting a money
bribe (Case 3), and stealing a watch at a crime scene (Case 5)--as very serious
offenses. 

Discipline. In general, police officers thought that the four cases they regarded
as not very serious warranted little or no discipline. Officers thought that the
four cases involving an intermediate level of seriousness merited a written
reprimand or a period of suspension, and that the three very serious cases
merited dismissal. 

To measure how officers perceived the fairness of discipline, the scores on the
"discipline would receive" scale were subtracted from the scores on the
"discipline should receive" scale. A difference of zero was interpreted to mean
that the respondent thought the discipline was fair. If the difference was greater
than zero (positive), the respondent thought that the discipline was too lenient.
Conversely, if the difference was less than zero (negative), the respondent
thought that the discipline was too harsh.[2] In 7 of the 11 cases, the
overwhelming majority of police officers in the sample thought that the discipline
that would be imposed was in the "fair" range. But in the remaining four cases,
including three that officers considered not serious--Case 2 (accepting free
meals and discounts on the beat), Case 4 (accepting holiday gifts), Case 8
(coverup of police DUI), and Case 10 (excessive force on car thief)--more
than 20 percent of police officers believed that the discipline administered by
their agencies would be too harsh.

Parameters of The Code. An examination of the parameters of The Code of
Silence, as revealed in the responses of police officers in the sample, indicated
that the majority would not report a police colleague who had engaged in
behavior described in the four scenarios considered the least serious. At the
same time, a majority indicated that they would report[3] a fellow police officer
who had engaged in behavior they deemed to be at an intermediate or high level
of seriousness. 

Agency contrasts in the culture of integrity

Measurements of the inclination of U.S. police to resist temptations to abuse the
rights and privileges of their occupation are likely to prove useful for academic,
historical, and cross-cultural studies of police.[4] For police administrators,
however, measurements of the culture of integrity of individual police agencies
are more relevant than national averages, which often mask significant
differences among agencies. 

To uncover these differences and allow comparisons to be made, a system was
devised for ranking the responses of officers in each agency. To determine an
agency's overall ranking on how its officers perceived the seriousness of a
particular offense, the mean score of all responses by officers in that agency to
each of the 11 case scenarios was compared to the mean scores of the
remaining 29 agencies. The agency was then awarded 3 points if its mean score
placed it among the top 10 agencies on any question, 2 points if it scored in the
middle 10, and 1 point if it scored among the lowest 10. These scores were
then totaled for all 11 case scenarios. Using this scaling system, an agency's
score on its officers' perceptions of the seriousness of the offenses could range
from 11 (if it ranked in the lowest third of agencies on all 11 cases) to 33 (if it
ranked among the highest third of agencies on all 11 cases).[5]

These summary scores formed the basis for placing agencies in rank order from
1 to 30 (with 1 being the highest integrity rating), making it possible to say that
an agency ranked "n out of 30" in its officers' perceptions of offense
seriousness. This procedure was used to calculate a summary score and an
integrity ranking for each agency's responses to each of the six questions about
offense seriousness, discipline that should and would be received, and
willingness to report the offense. Exhibit 2 summarizes those rankings.

The environment of integrity in two agencies. To illustrate how environments of
integrity differ across U.S. police agencies, it is useful to contrast the responses
of officers from two of the agencies in the sample. Agency 2, which ranked 8th
in integrity of the 30 agencies surveyed, and Agency 23, which ranked in a
5-way tie for 24th place, are both large municipal police agencies. Agency 2
has a national reputation for integrity, is extremely receptive to research, and is
often promoted as a model of innovation. Agency 23 has a long history of
scandal, and its reputation as an agency with corruption problems persists
despite numerous reform efforts. Although a local newspaper once dubbed
Agency 23 "the most corrupt police department in the country," six other
agencies in the sample appear to have integrity environments that are as poor or
worse. 

In both agencies, the correlation of the scores' rank ordering among the
categories was very high, as it was for all 30 agencies surveyed. For every
agency, the mean rank order of officers' responses to the six integrity-related
questions was nearly identical. Furthermore, the rank ordering of the scenarios
differed little among the agencies.

Although differences in the rank ordering of the scenarios were minimal, both
within and between the two agencies, discrepancies in the agencies' absolute
scores reflected significant differences (see exhibits 3 and 4). Estimates of
offense seriousness were consistently higher for Agency 2 than for Agency 23.
The differences were especially large (between 0.5 and 1.0 on a 5-point scale)
for three scenarios: Case 6 (auto repair shop kickback), Case 9 (drinks to
ignore late bar closing), and Case 10 (excessive force on car thief). Police
officers from Agency 2 evaluated each of these cases as substantially more
serious than did officers from Agency 23. 

The mean scores for discipline indicate that, in almost every case, police
officers in Agency 2 not only expected more severe discipline than did officers
in Agency 23, but they also thought that more severe discipline was
appropriate. The differences in perceptions of discipline were especially great
for the most serious types of corruption, such as the scenarios described in
Case 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 excessive
force). While officers in Agency 2 thought that dismissal would result from the
four most serious cases, officers in Agency 23 expected that dismissal would
follow only one scenario, Case 5 (theft from a crime scene).

The most systematic and dramatic difference between Agencies 2 and 23,
however, is evident in their attitudes toward The Code of Silence. In both
agencies, few officers said that they or their police colleagues would report any
of the least serious types of corrupt behavior (Cases 1, 2, 4, and 8). Officers
from Agency 2 reported that they and their colleagues would report the
behavior described in the seven other cases. In Agency 23, however, there was
no case that the majority of officers indicated they would report. In sum, while
The Code is under control in Agency 2, it remains a powerful influence in
Agency 23, providing an environment in which corrupt behavior can flourish. 

Conclusions and implications

Redefining the problem of police corruption (i.e., the abuse of police authority
for gain) as a problem of police integrity--the normative inclination among
police to resist temptations to abuse their authority--enables the direct
measurement of the major propositions of an organizational/occupational theory
of police integrity. The research reported in this Research in Brief demonstrates
that police attitudes toward the seriousness of misconduct, the discipline that
should and would result, and the willingness of officers to tolerate misconduct in
silence can be measured. Moreover, the measurements reported in this national
sample are relatively easy to collect. At the same time, they demonstrate
substantial differences in the environments of integrity in U.S. police agencies.

The ability to measure environments of integrity in police agencies holds great
potential for academic studies of police and for practical police administration.
For researchers, quantitative cross-cultural, historical, and national comparisons
that were previously unthinkable have now become feasible. 

Equally important, such measurements have direct implications for practical
police administration because each of the propositions of an
organizational/occupational theory of integrity implies a specific administrative
response. If officers do not know whether certain conduct violates agency
policy or what disciplinary threats the agency makes, administrators have a
clear responsibility to communicate this information to officers. If officers do not
regard certain misconduct as sufficiently serious, if they regard discipline as too
severe or too lenient, or if they are willing to tolerate the misconduct of their
police peers in silence, administrators have an obvious obligation to find out
why. A police administrator can take specific actions to deal with each of these
problems.

The survey instrument used in this study was designed to assess only one aspect
of police integrity. In all case scenarios but one--the use of excessive force--the
misconduct described was motivated by personal gain. In discussing
environments of integrity, therefore, this survey makes no observation about
abuses of discretion in arrests, order maintenance, discourtesy to citizens, or
other police misconduct not usually motivated by temptations of gain. A second
generation of this survey will explore those problems.[6]

A final note

This survey does not measure the extent of corruption in any police agency or
institution. Rather, it measures the culture of police integrity--the normative
inclination of police officers to resist the temptations to abuse the rights and
privileges of their office. The survey does not identify either corrupt or honest
police officers; nor does it provide any evidence of abusive or dishonest
practices--past, present, or future. The survey findings do describe, in a fairly
precise way, the characteristics of a police agency's culture that encourage its
employees to resist or tolerate certain types of misconduct. 

--------------------------

Notes

1. Goldstein, Herman, Police Corruption: Perspective on Its Nature and
Control, Washington, DC: Police Foundation, 1975; and Goldstein, H.,
Policing a Free Society, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1977. See also Sherman,
Lawrence W., Scandal and Reform, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1978; Marx, Gary, Surveillance, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1991; Punch, Maurice, Conduct Unbecoming: The Social Construction of
Police Deviance and Control, London: Tavistock, 1986; and Manning, Peter
K., and Lawrence Redlinger, "The Invitational Edges of Police Corruption," in
Thinking About Police, edited by Carl Klockars and Stephen Mastrofski, 
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993: 398-412. 

2. Note that the notions of "greater than zero (positive)" and "less than zero
(negative)" are merely shorthand for discipline perceived as too lenient and too
harsh, respectively. In other words, because the data are ordinal, positive or
negative differences will not be used in any algebraic context. Rather, these
differences will be used solely as indicators to classify respondents into three
groups--those who perceive discipline to be fair, too lenient, or too harsh.

3. The frequency distribution of responses to the question about officers' own
willingness to report a particular offense was analyzed. The five-point scale of
offered answers ranged from 1="definitely not" to 5="definitely yes." A
cumulative frequency above 50 percent for 1 and 2 was interpreted to indicate
that police officers would not report the offense. A cumulative frequency above
50 percent for 4 and 5, on the other hand, was interpreted to indicate that the
police officers would report the offense.

4. See, for example, Haberfeld, Maria, Carl Klockars, Sanja Kutnjak
Ivkovich, and Milan Pagon, "Disciplinary Consequences of Police Corruption in
Croatia, Poland, Slovenia, and the United States," Police Practice and
Research, An International Journal 1 (1) (2000): 41-72.

5. An alternative summary ranking system could, of course, be based on the full
range of 30-point rankings for each of the 11 scenarios. This type of system
would create a scale that could range from 330 (for an agency that scored the
lowest of the 30 agencies on all 6 questions for all 11 scenarios) to 1,980 (for
an agency that scored the highest of all 30 agencies on all 6 questions for all 11
scenarios). Such a scoring system would, however, magnify small and primarily
meaningless differences in mean scores, creating a false sense of precision. The
ranking system developed for and employed in this research intentionally seeks
to blunt any false sense of precision by allowing agencies to score, in a sense,
only "high," "middle," or "low" on any given question.

6. A summary of the status of progress with this next generation of measures of
police integrity can be found on the videotape of the Research in Progress
seminar "Measuring Police Integrity," presented by Carl Klockars at the
National Institute of Justice in January 1999. Copies are available through the
National Criminal Justice Reference Service at 800-851-3420. Please refer to
NCJ 174459.

--------------------------

Survey Design and Methodology

Case scenarios. The survey questionnaire presented officers with 11
hypothetical case scenarios. Displayed in exhibit A, the scenarios cover a range
of activities, from those that merely give an appearance 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 a car thief. 

Respondents were asked to evaluate each scenario by answering seven
questions (see exhibit B). Six of these questions were designed to assess the
normative inclination of police to resist temptations to abuse the rights and
privileges of their occupation. To measure this dimension of police integrity, the
six questions were paired as follows:

--Two questions pertained to the seriousness of each case--one addressed the
respondent's own view and the other concerned the respondent's perception of
the views of other officers.

--Two related to severity of discipline--one addressed the discipline the
respondent felt the behavior should receive and the other addressed the
discipline the officer felt it would receive.

--Two concerned willingness to report the misconduct--one addressed the
respondent's own willingness to report it, and the other concerned the
respondent's perception of other officers' willingness to report it. 

The remaining question asked respondents whether the behavior described in
the scenario was a violation of the agency's official policy.

The incidents described in the scenarios were not only plausible and common
forms of police misconduct, but ones that were uncomplicated by details that
might introduce ambiguity into either the interpretation of the behavior or the
motive of the officer depicted in the scenario. Some scenarios were based on
published studies that had employed a case scenario approach.[a] Others drew
on the experience of the authors. Respondents were asked to assume that the
officer depicted in each scenario had been a police officer for 5 years and had a
satisfactory work record with no history of disciplinary problems. 

Survey sample. The sample consisted of 3,235 officers from 30 U.S. police
agencies. Although these agencies were drawn from across the Nation and the
sample was quite large, it was nonetheless a convenience sample, not a
representative sample. The characteristics of the officers in this sample are
summarized in exhibit C. The majority of the police officers surveyed were
employed in patrol or traffic units (63.1 percent). The overwhelming majority of
respondents were line officers; only one of five police officers was a supervisor.
The mean length of service for the entire sample was 10.3 years.

The sample has some biases, including overrepresentation of particular types of
police agencies and particular regions of the country. Because it includes no
State police agencies, only one sheriff's agency, and only one county police
agency, the sample overrepresents municipal police agencies. The sample also
overrepresents police agencies from the Northeast. Although the sample does
include agencies from the South, Southeast, and Southwest, it does not include
agencies from the West, Northwest, or Midwest. 

The sample likely has another bias because not all agencies that were asked to
participate in the study accepted the invitation. The reason for an agency's
refusal to participate could include a fear of revealing something untoward.
Agencies declined to participate despite assurances that their participation in the
survey would be kept confidential; that all individual respondents would remain
anonymous; and that respondents would be asked about only their opinions,
not any actual misconduct. 

Nevertheless, the sample includes some seriously troubled police agencies. Key
contacts in a number of such agencies, including senior officers and high-ranking
union officials, exercised sufficient influence to arrange the participation of these
agencies in the survey.

a. A number of studies of police corruption have employed a research strategy
that asked police officers to evaluate hypothetical corruption scenarios. These
include Fishman, Janet E., Measuring Police Corruption, New York: John Jay
College of Criminal Justice, 1978; Martin, Christine, Illinois Municipal Officers'
Perceptions of Police Ethics, Chicago: Illinois Criminal Justice Information
Authority, 1994; Huon, Gail F., Beryl L. Hesketh, Mark G. Frank, Kevin M.
McConkey, and G.M. McGrath, Perceptions of Ethical Dilemmas, Payneham,
Australia: 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): 27-45.

Exhibit A. Case scenarios

Case 1. A police officer runs his own private business in which he sells and
installs security devices, 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 value from merchants on his beat. He does not solicit these gifts
and is careful not to abuse the generosity of those who give gifts to him.

Case 3. A police officer stops a motorist for speeding. The officer agrees to
accept a personal gift 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 and restaurant and bar owners show their appreciation for his
attention by giving him gifts of 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 takes a watch, worth about 2 days' pay for that officer.
He reports that the watch had been stolen during the burglary.

Case 6. A police officer has a private arrangement with a local auto body shop
to refer the owners 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 work during coming holidays. A supervisor offers to give him
these days off, if he agrees to tune up his supervisor's personal car. Evaluate the
supervisor's behavior.

Case 8. At 2:00 a.m., a police officer, who is on duty, is driving his patrol car
on a deserted road. He sees a vehicle that has been driven off the road and is
stuck in a ditch. He approaches the vehicle and observes that the driver is not
hurt but is obviously intoxicated. He also finds that the driver is a police officer.
Instead of reporting this accident and 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 to accept 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 an automobile. The man flees. They chase him for about two blocks
before apprehending him by tackling him and wrestling him to the ground. After
he is under control, both officers punch him a couple of times in the stomach as
punishment for fleeing and resisting.

Case 11. A police officer finds a wallet in a parking lot. It contains an amount
of money equivalent to a full day's pay for that officer. He reports the wallet as
lost property but keeps the money for himself.

Exhibit B. Case scenario assessment options

1. How serious do YOU consider this behavior to be?
--1 (Not at all serious)
--2
--3
--4
--5 (Very serious)

2. How serious do MOST POLICE OFFICERS IN YOUR AGENCY
consider this behavior to be?
--1 (Not at all serious)
--2
--3
--4
--5 (Very serious)

3. Would this behavior be regarded as a violation of official policy in your
agency?
--1 (Definitely not)
--2
--3
--4
--5 (Definitely yes)

4. If an officer in your agency engaged in this behavior and was discovered
doing so, what if any discipline do YOU think SHOULD follow? 
--1. NONE
--2. VERBAL REPRIMAND
--3. WRITTEN REPRIMAND
--4. PERIOD OF SUSPENSION WITHOUT PAY 
--5. DEMOTION IN RANK
--6. DISMISSAL

5. If an officer in your agency engaged in this behavior and was discovered
doing so, what if any discipline do YOU think WOULD follow?
--1. NONE
--2. VERBAL REPRIMAND
--3. WRITTEN REPRIMAND
--4. PERIOD OF SUSPENSION WITHOUT PAY 
--5. DEMOTION IN RANK
--6. DISMISSAL

6. Do you think YOU would report a fellow police officer who engaged in this
behavior?
--1 (Definitely not)
--2
--3
--4
--5 (Definitely yes)

7. Do you think MOST POLICE OFFICERS IN YOUR AGENCY would
report a fellow police officer who engaged in this behavior?
--1 (Definitely not)
--2
--3
--4
--5 (Definitely yes)

--------------------------

Validity of Survey Responses

The validity of the survey's results hinges on the honesty of police officers when
responding to the survey questions. Several steps were taken to enhance the
legitimacy of the survey results. First, officers were asked only about their
attitudes, not about their actual behavior or the actual behavior of other police
officers. They also were assured that their responses would remain confidential,
although police respondents are naturally suspicious of such promises. 

To further allay officers' fears that their identities might be discovered, they
were asked only minimal background questions: their rank, length of service,
and assignment and whether they held a supervisory position. They were not
asked standard questions about age, race, gender, or ethnicity in an effort to
assuage fears that disclosing such information, in combination with 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 two
questions about the validity of the responses. The first was "Do you think most
police officers would give their honest opinion in filling out this questionnaire?"
The second was "Did you?" In answer to the first question, 84.4 percent of
police respondents reported that they thought most officers would answer the
questions honestly, and 97.8 percent reported that they themselves had done
so. The responses of the 2.2 percent of police officers who reported that they
had not answered the questions honestly were discarded when the survey
results were analyzed.

The survey questions also were designed to minimize any temptation for officers
to manipulate responses to create a favorable impression on the public or on
their supervisors. Some officers, for example, might have been inclined to
report that certain types of misconduct were more serious than they actually
thought them to be. At the same time, however, these officers would be unlikely
to report that misconduct should be punished more severely than they thought
appropriate because of the possibility that they might one day be subject to
such discipline, if administrators believed that they were recommending it.

Furthermore, if any substantial manipulation of answers had occurred, it would
have been evident in differences in correlation coefficients among the questions
about seriousness, discipline, and willingness to report. In fact, the rank order 
correlation between all six questions is extraordinarily high. Indeed, one could
predict with great accuracy the ranking of a scenario on any one of the six
questions by knowing the ranking for any other.

---------------------------

Carl B. Klockars, Ph.D., is professor in the Department of Sociology and
Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, Ph.D.,
is a doctoral student at Harvard Law School. William E. Harver, Ph.D., is
assistant professor of social science in the College of Arts and Sciences at
Widener University. Maria R. Haberfeld, Ph.D., is assistant professor in the
Department of Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration at the
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. The study
reported in this Research in Brief was supported by the Office of Community
Oriented Policing Services and NIJ through NIJ grant number 95-IJ-CX-0058. 

Police administrators interested in applying the approach used in this study to
measure the environment of integrity in their own agencies are advised to
contact Professor Carl B. Klockars, Principal Investigator, Enhancing Police
Integrity Project, Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, Newark, DE
19716.

--------------------------

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Findings and conclusions of the research reported here are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S.
Department of Justice. 

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice
Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of
Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and
the Office for Victims of Crime.

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NCJ 181465