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The purpose of this paper is to offer and test a theoretical framework that can be used to identify different styles of peer reporting, and explain why police officers and labour inspectors (do not) report peers’ misconduct.

A conceptual framework is developed that identifies underlying mechanisms of peer reporting. It aims to be an alternative for the blue code of silence literature and the general whistleblowing studies, which have a number of disadvantages. This newly developed framework is then tested in a qualitative research project in the police and the labour inspection in a West‐European country.

This paper concludes that, in the four agencies, the individualistic type of keeping silent is often preferred when confronted with colleagues’ misbehaviour, but in exceptional situations respondents decide to report colleagues’ misbehaviour to their boss in a fatalistic or individualistic way. This can probably be explained by the low group (and, thus, fatalistic or individualistic) working context. As for the police, the respondents are “case officers” who are solely responsible for the success of their investigations. As for the labour inspection, the respondents enjoy wide discretion and autonomy in their investigations. In the labour inspections a hierarchical silence code can be found among inspectors with low seniority.

This qualitative study is an exploratory study, aimed at theory‐building by developing hypotheses which need to be tested in future research. It is not aimed at making generalisations to other police agencies or labour inspections.

Grid group cultural theory could inspire practitioners who want to implement whistleblowing policies by recommending that whistleblowing measures, to be effective, should be adapted to organisational characteristics and the prevalent whistleblowing behaviour.

This paper offers a new theoretical framework to analyse and explain peer reporting in the police and other professional groups; not only enriching the police culture literature, but also enabling comparative research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contours of the police code of silence, a critical component of the ability to control misconduct and enhance integrity within any police agency. Unlike the extant research, dominated by single-country studies, this paper provides an in-depth exploration of the code across five countries and tests the relation between the code of science and societal characteristics.

A police integrity survey was used to measure the contours of the code of silence among police officers in Australia (n=856), Croatia (n=966), South Africa (n=871), South Korea (n=379) and the USA (n=664). The respondents evaluated 11 hypothetical scenarios describing various forms of police misconduct.

Bivariate analyses reveal considerable divergence in the code of silence across the five countries. Multivariate models of the code of silence show that, next to organizational factors (i.e. the respondents’ assessment of peers’ willingness to report, evaluations of misconduct seriousness and expected discipline) and individual factors (i.e. supervisory status), societal factors (i.e. the Corruption Perceptions Index score and the percent of irreligious citizens) are significant predictors of the respondents’ willingness to report.

While the same questionnaire was used in all five countries, the nature of the data collection differed somewhat across the countries (e.g. online survey vs paper-and-pencil survey), as did the nature of the samples (e.g. representative sample vs convenience sample).

Perceived peer pressure, measured as the perceptions of whether other police officers would adhere to the code of silence, is the key variable explaining the police officers’ expressed willingness to adhere to the code of silence. Changing the police officers’ perceptions of peer culture and potentially changing the peer culture itself should be critical elements in the toolbox of any administrator willing to curtail the code of silence.

Whereas the study of the code of silence has started several decades ago, no prior study has tested the effects of organizational and societal variables on the code of silence in a comparative perspective.

This study aims to examine disparities in the code of silence between rural and urban police officers in China.

Data were collected from a national police university in China in 2017. In total, 608 Chinese police officers were surveyed, all of whom attended the in-service training program at the university.

Results suggest that rural officers in China are more likely to embrace the code of silence than their urban counterparts. Additionally, this study demonstrates significant influences of such organizational and environmental factors as police type, agency location and perception of misconduct seriousness on adherence to the code of silence.

This study used a convenient sampling approach, which restricts the generalizability of the results.

Given the stronger code of silence among rural officers, there should be more efforts devoted to cultivating a positive ethical climate within rural police organizations. These efforts may need to come from higher levels of government, given the administrative structure in China. In addition, police supervisors in rural agencies should play an important role, given that they are the first line of defense in detecting and responding to misconduct, and are essential in fostering and sustaining a good ethical environment within the police agency.

Using unique policing data collected from China, this study addresses an important gap in the literature regarding research on rural-urban differences in the police code of silence.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contours of the code of silence, as a critical component of the ability to control misconduct and enhance integrity within any police agency, among officers (both line officers and supervisors) of the South African Police Service (SAPS).

In 2005, the authors surveyed police supervisors from seven South African provinces and autonomous provinces. The questionnaire distributed to police supervisors contains 11 vignettes describing various forms of police corruption and one vignette describing the use of excessive force. The sample consists of 379 police supervisors.

Results of the study indicate the existence of a strong code of silence among the SAPS supervisors. The authors report that the code of silence does not protect all misconduct equally; yet, a substantial minority of SAPS supervisors in the sample would protect many forms of police corruption from exposure. It was found that, with the exception of the three most serious scenarios of police corruption, no significant relation exists between the code of silence and the perceptions of disciplinary fairness. The code of silence is strong and it only weakens for the three or four most serious scenarios.

The respondents in the study were police supervisors who were attending training at the SAPS training centers.

South African police administrators interested in controlling police corruption and curtailing the code of silence should start with their subordinate supervisors first. The strong code of silence among the supervisors prevents them from playing their critical role in the control of police misconduct and the curtailing of the code of silence among the line officers.

Empirical studies of police officers in South Africa are rare. Despite the extensive efforts at reforming the SAPS, the SAPS seem to continue to be integrity‐challenged. This empirical research focuses on the code of silence, a key element of police integrity, and includes opinions of a nation‐wide sample of the SAPS supervisors about the code of silence. In addition, the research explores the relation between the code of silence and perceptions of disciplinary fairness.

This study examines the relationship between police culture and support for corruption among Ghanaian police officers.

The study draws on data from a survey of 616 police officers across three regions in Ghana. The research questions and hypotheses are addressed through a hierarchical regression analysis.

The results show that perception of corruption prevalence, lack of deterrence (i.e. perceived oversight measures) and the Upper East Region significantly predicted officers’ support for corruption. Particularly, lack of deterrence was a consistent predictor of support for corruption across different models compared to corruption prevalence. Contrary to previous studies, code of silence was found not to predict officers’ support for corruption.

This paper contributes to the police culture and corruption debate an African perspective, where little research has explored the relationship between police culture and corruption. The code of silence not predicting support for corruption contradicts previous studies and contributes to the debate, literature and theory development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the contours of police integrity among Chinese police officers. Specifically, this study explores how Chinese police evaluate integrity based on official policy governing interactions, discipline governing infractions, views of seriousness, and willingness to inform when others engage in misconduct.

In total, 353 police officers were surveyed representing those attending in-service training program at a Chinese police university in May 2015. Questionnaires containing 11 scenarios describing police misbehaviors were distributed to officers during classes.

There was a strong correlation between officers’ perceptions of rule-violation, misconduct seriousness, discipline, and willingness to report. Additionally, preliminary results suggest there exists a code of silence among Chinese officers, and that Chinese officers hold a lenient attitude toward the use of excessive force.

This study utilizes a convenient sample, which restricts the generalizability of the results.

The results indicate the existence of code of silence among Chinese officers and their lenient attitude toward the use of excessive force.

Although there has been a growing body of research examining police integrity in both western democracies and transitional societies, China as the largest developing nation in the world and with a unique police system (falls somewhere between the centralized model and the integrated model) is understudied. This study addresses this gap in previous literature by exploring the contours of police integrity among Chinese police officers.

Several recent incidents of highly publicized police misconduct in the United States have intensified interest in controlling police behavior. Administrative control of police use of force is difficult because police officers are often the primary and most credible witnesses to police misconduct, effectively giving them enforcement power over rules they are subject to; police cooperation as both rule followers and rule enforcers is necessary for effectively constraining police misconduct. The authors develop a framework for examining how organizational and institutional variables can affect individual decision making. Using this framework, the authors identify three avenues for reducing police misconduct – increasing the information generated by non-police sources, increasing the incentive for officers to cooperate with external enforcement efforts, and changing the expectations of officers regarding the attitudes and behaviors of their peers – and present a case study of Oakland California Police Department to illustrate the implications.

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.

In 2005, 150 police supervisors and 450 line officers from East Bohemia, the Czech Republic were surveyed, regarding crucial components of police integrity.

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.

The survey included only police officers from East Bohemia in the Czech Republic.

The methodology can be utilized by police administrators to explore the contours of the code of silence in their agencies, police officers' views about appropriate and expected discipline, as well as the relation between the police officers' willingness to tolerate misconduct in silence, and their perceptions of the fairness of the expected discipline.

Studies exploring the relation between the code of silence and discipline fairness are rare. This study contributes to this scarce literature along two dimensions: first, it provides an in‐depth analysis of the relation between the extent of the code of silence and views of discipline fairness in an emerging democracy; and second, it explores the effect of police officer rank on this relation.

This paper aims to provide an in-depth exploration of the code of silence in Korean policing and its relationship to perceptions of disciplinary fairness.

The authors separately surveyed 370 Korean police officers in 2008 and 356 Korean police officers in 2019. The respondents were asked to evaluate seven hypothetical scenarios measuring different types of police misconduct from police corruption to the use of excessive force.

The results demonstrated that the strength of the code of silence decreased over a decade. The code of silence seems to protect less serious examples of police misconduct more strongly than more serious examples of police misconduct. Furthermore, the extent of the code of silence and perceptions of discipline severity are closely related in situations in which the expected discipline is evaluated by officers as too harsh. When police officers evaluated the expected discipline as fair, they were less likely to adhere to the code of silence than when they evaluated the expected discipline as too harsh, providing support for the simple justice model. On the other hand, the results are mixed for comparisons of the code of silence among respondents who evaluated discipline as fair and those who evaluated discipline as too lenient.

This is one of few studies focusing on the potential changes in the code of silence over time and on its relationship with the perception of disciplinary fairness. South Korea has conducted a reform of the police (the Grand Reform) in the late 1990s and more recently enacted the new laws regulating police misconduct. This study relies on two independent surveys of the same population of police officersto empirically assesses potential changes resulting from these societal and organizational transformations.

The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of the code of silence among police recruits in an effort to provide recommendations to reduce its occurrence and harm to society.

Data analyses are performed on a multi-agency sample of 645 police recruits in the United States. Specifically, analyses are conducted on pre- and post-academy panel data to assess changes in recruits' perceptions of code adherence over time as they begin their immersion into the police culture.

Results demonstrate that police recruits' willingness to report a fellow officer is reduced by the end of the academy and that several individual and organizational factors impact recruits' code adherence attitudes over time.

This study contributes to the policing literature by exploring changes in recruits' code adherence attitudes over time.