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The purpose of this paper is to determine the prevalence of the use of discipline matrices across large US police departments, as well as to compare the structure and content of such matrices.

The study employs a two phase approach. Phase I consisted of a brief online survey of a stratified, random sample of police departments with 100 or more sworn police officers and asked about whether or not the agency employed a discipline matrix. Phase II consisted of requesting a copy of the matrix and corresponding materials from all agencies who indicated they employed a matrix, and analyzing the content of those matrices.

In total, 37 percent of responding agencies said they are using or are planning a discipline matrix, and the authors obtained a matrix from 32 police departments. The structure of the matrices and recommended discipline varied widely across these departments, indicating a lack of consensus on the development of this relatively new accountability tool.

The survey focussed on large police departments and the response rate was somewhat lower than other past national surveys.

Discipline matrices are employed to a greater extent than is implied by the current research literature. The lack of consensus and variability in policies around matrices indicates a need for more research which could contribute toward the formation of a model policy in this regard.

To date the prevalence of discipline matrices across US police departments was unknown, and very little was known about how they were structured or what comprised their content.

Following the theoretical model of reporting and disciplinary fairness developed by Kutnjak Ivković and Klockars (1998), the purpose of this paper is to use a survey of US police officers to explore empirically the contours of the code of silence and the potential relation between the code and perceptions of disciplinary fairness.

In 2013-2014, a police integrity survey was used to measure the contours of police integrity among 604 police officers from 11 police agencies located in the Midwest and on the East Coast of the USA. The questionnaire contains descriptions of 11 scenarios describing various forms of police misconduct, followed by seven questions measuring officer views of scenario seriousness, the appropriate and expected discipline, and willingness to report misconduct.

The results point out that the code of silence varies greatly across the scenarios, both for supervisors and line officers. While the supervisor code and the line officer code differ substantially, they are the most similar for the scenarios evaluated as the most serious. Compared to the respondents who evaluated expected discipline as fair, the respondents who evaluated it as too harsh were more likely to say that they would adhere to the code. On the other hand, compared to the respondents who evaluated discipline as fair, the respondents who evaluate the expected discipline as too lenient were as likely to adhere to the code.

The data were collected online, resulting in a lower response rates those typical of traditional paper surveys.

The results of the research allow police supervisors interested in the controlling the code of silence to assess where the code is the weakest and easiest to break. Furthermore, the findings suggest to the supervisors who want to curtail the code that the strategy of meting out discipline perceived by line officers as too harsh will potentially only strengthen the code.

Whereas the study of the code of silence has started several decades ago, empirical studies exploring the relation between the code of silence and perceptions of disciplinary fairness are rare.

The purpose of this paper is to test an aspect of the theory of police integrity by exploring the perceived disciplinary threat made by police agencies in Croatia, South Africa, South Korea, and the USA.

A police integrity survey was used to assess perceptions of the expected discipline meted out by police agencies in four countries. Samples of police officers from Croatia, South Africa, South Korea, and the USA evaluated 11 hypothetical scenarios describing various forms of police misconduct.

Bi-variate analyses reveal considerable divergence of perceptions of disciplinary consequences across the four countries. The majority of the respondents in each country expected some discipline for every scenario, but dismissal was expected for very few scenarios. Multivariate models of perceptions of expected discipline show that the country effect remains strong in the majority of the scenarios even in the presence of numerous controls.

To accommodate the diversity of legal rules, answers providing disciplinary options were not identical across countries. Some of the samples are representative, while others are convenience samples.

The results show that, controlling for societal integrity, organizational variables play a critical role in shaping the respondents’ perceptions of expected discipline. Teaching police officers official rules might be an effective tool toward attaining more accurate perceptions of expected discipline.

Police integrity research is dominated by single-country studies; this paper provides an in-depth exploration of perceptions of expected discipline across four countries.

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 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 paper is to study the extent and nature of police integrity in Armenia. It analyses police officer views about misconduct seriousness, appropriate and expected discipline, and willingness to report misconduct.

The respondents surveyed in this study are 468 Armenian police officers assigned to work in two large police departments, Yerevan and Lori. The overall response rate is 84 per cent. The respondents evaluated 11 hypothetical scenarios describing cases of police misconduct.

Although the majority of the respondents recognized and labelled the behaviour described in the scenarios as rule violating, a large proportion, in some cases even above 40 per cent, did not do so. The respondents’ evaluations of misconduct seriousness varied greatly across the scenarios. In only two scenarios, describing the acceptance of a bribe from a speeding motorist and the theft of a watch from a crime scene, the respondents thought that both the appropriate and expected discipline should and would be severe; in all of the other scenarios, the respondents expected and approved of either no discipline at all or quite lenient discipline. The code of silence appears to be strong among our respondents, protecting almost all behaviours described in the questionnaire. Unique to Armenia is the finding that the respondents estimated that they would subscribe to the code of silence to a larger extent than their fellow officers would.

Police officers included in the survey come from two police departments.

Police administrators interested in controlling the code of silence could apply the methodology used in this research to ascertain the extent and nature of the code beforehand. They could use the methodology to assess and compare the police officer perceptions of the discipline the agency is expected to mete out with the discipline meted out in actual cases and, if necessary, work on addressing the discrepancy between the perceptions and reality.

Although Armenia has been one of the former Soviet republics that purged the communist government even before the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the transition toward democracy has been troublesome and riddled with widespread accusations of various types of failures in police integrity. The methodology used in this research enables measurement of the nature and extent of police integrity at the present time and also, subsequently, monitoring and detection of the changes in police integrity, which is particularly relevant for a police agency in transition.

The purpose of this study is to examine the contours of police integrity among Korean police officers a decade after police reform was started.

The data were collected in 2009 at the Korean National Police University (KNPU) and the Police Comprehensive Academy (PCA). The questionnaires distributed to police officers contained 14 vignettes describing various forms of police misconduct. The sample consists of 329 police officers, mostly non‐supervisors, attending courses at the KNPU and PCA.

Results indicate that the contours of police integrity vary across different forms of misconduct. Regardless of whether the respondents' views were measured through questions about misconduct seriousness, appropriate discipline, willingness to report, or knowledge about official rules, the findings suggest that Korean police officers perceived corruption as a serious form of police misconduct, while they considered the use of excessive force to be substantially less serious. In addition, a strong code of silence among the police was detected.

The study examines the contours of police integrity among a convenience sample of police officers from South Korea.

The Korean police administrators interested in controlling police misconduct could utilize this methodology to explore the contours of the code of silence among the Korean police. The results of the study indicate that substantial focus should be put on changing police officer views about the use of excessive force and narrowing the code of silence in general.

The results show that the contours of police integrity among South Korean police officers clearly reflect the attitudes and views of the society at large toward corruption and use of excessive force. The lenient attitudes that South Korean police officers have expressed regarding the use of excessive force reflect both the historical attitudes and the lack of clarity of official rules. The strong code of silence is related to the insufficient protection for whistleblowers and the adherence to Confucianism among Korean citizens.

Prior research predominantly measured police integrity as the opposite of police corruption in Western democracies and East European countries in transition. This research expands this by focusing on different forms of police misconduct. In addition, it explores integrity in an Asian democracy with the police agency undergoing extensive reform.

Purpose – This chapter ruminates on a range of different ways that the author experiences being what the author calls a “lurker” in mainstream criminologies as a queer criminologist.

Methodology/approach – Drawing on the work of Jack Halberstam, Michel Foucault, Heather Love, Sarah Ahmed, and other queer theorists, the author explores their positionality as a lurker in mainstream criminologies, and policing particular, to better understand how “[d]isciplines qualify and disqualify, legitimate and delegitimate, reward and punish” (Halberstam, 2011, p. 10), and how leaders of these disciplines make calculated decisions about who qualifies as legitimate scholars of policing knowing.

Findings – The discussion steps through some significant moments of discomfort that have emerged in lurking around with/in these disciplines, and in doing the work of queer research with queer people about queer policing.

Originality/value – The author finishes by sharing strategies and learnings that have emerged out of these research and disciplinary contexts. The author suggests that it is most valuable to continue to lurk so their position of discomfort and potential failure persists as a more productive positionality than conforming with the mainstream.

The purpose of this paper is to study lawsuits involving the police using newspaper accounts from three large cities in the USA.

A content analysis was conducted using 634 newspaper articles from the New York Times, Chicago Sun‐Times, and the Los Angeles Times from 1993‐2003.

Research findings reveal how prevalent racial and gender discrimination issues are in lawsuits involving the police; some of the differences in lawsuits filed by police employees compared to those filed by citizens; the extent of disciplinary action taken against police officers named in lawsuits, and any organizational changes (i.e. department policies, procedures, or training) made as a result of lawsuits filed against police agencies.

The findings from this study are based solely on what the newspapers chose to report. It may be the case that newspapers only report on extraordinary lawsuits involving the police, or lawsuits that result in moderate to large jury awards or settlements.

Since there is currently no national data collection effort focused on lawsuits filed against the police, researchers are left to use the data sources available to them (in this case, newspaper articles).

This paper presents the first study of lawsuits involving the police using newspaper accounts. Previous studies have used survey data, court records, and interviews.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the causes of police corruption in Taiwan and identify those factors which can enhance the status of police.

A literature review and eight in-depth interviews of informants are employed to support the arguments of environment, education, governance and culture and to formulate a typology of police corruption in Taiwan.

The literature review and eight interviews confirm that individual cases of police corruption have replaced systemic police corruption in Taiwan. The author concludes that police corruption should be addressed in the context of both environment and institutional design. Even though the public perceptions of police integrity in Taiwan have been trending positively over the years, the individual cases of police corruption which occur within certain precincts indicate the continued importance of initiating institutional reforms. The public perceptions of Taiwan’s police force will be further improved if police corruption can be minimized and properly controlled.

This paper can serve as a benchmark to evaluate future development of Taiwan police corruption.

This paper provides an analysis of the causes of police corruption in Taiwan and the measures taken to curb it.