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The purpose of this paper is to critique contemporary tools for assessing and managing the risk of police misconduct and suggest directions for their improvement.

The paper draws on extant literature, synthesizing several lines of inquiry to summarize what the authors know about patterns of police misconduct, and what the authors know about assessing and managing police misconduct. Then the paper draws from the literature on offender risk assessment in criminal justice to draw lessons for assessing and managing the risk of police misconduct.

The authors found that there is good reason to believe that the tools used to assess the risk of misconduct make suboptimal predictions about officer performance because they rely on limited information of dubious value, but also that the predictive models on which the tools are based could be improved by better emulating procedures for assessing offenders’ risk of recidivism.

Future research should examine cross-sectional and longitudinal patterns of misconduct and associations between risk-related outputs and enforcement activity, develop better measures of criterion variables, and evaluate the predictive accuracy of risk assessment tools.

Police managers should make better use of the information available to them, improve the quantity and quality of information if feasible, and cooperate in the necessary research.

This paper offers a new synthesis of extant research to demonstrate the limitations of contemporary provisions for assessing the risk of police misconduct, and potential avenues for useful research and improved practice.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors which contribute to, or mitigate against, both the likelihood and timing of the onset of police misconduct.

Research hypotheses were tested examining the first personnel complaint filed against officers, using both all complaints and only substantiated complaints, from data collected on a large cohort of officers followed over a substantial portion of their careers.

Black officers and those exhibiting poor academy performance were at an increased likelihood of onset when compared to white and Hispanic officers and those who did better in the academy, while having a college degree lowered this likelihood. Officers whose first complaints were filed by citizens, and officers working certain patrol zones had quicker onset times. Those officers whose first complaint was related to service, as well as officers with prior military service, had longer onset times.

This study relies on personnel complaints to measure onset, was conducted in a very large police department, and does not include arrest data on officers over time.

Onset occurs early in officers’ careers. Some factors are consistent across complaint types, while others depend on whether all complaints or only substantiated complaints are used to measure onset, which suggests that future research should consider carefully which measure they employ.

This study employs a longitudinal data set which follows a cohort of officers from the start of their careers, and is thus ideal for exploring the onset of misconduct.

The purpose of this paper is to show that academic misconduct appears to be on the rise; some research has linked academic misconduct to unethical workplace behaviors. Unlike previous empirically‐driven research, this theory‐based study seeks to examine the usefulness of a modification of Ajzen's theory of planned behavior to predict academic misconduct.

A total of 271 students enrolled at a US university were surveyed. Structural equation modeling was used to test the model.

The modified theory of a planned behavior model in which intentions and justifications both serve as antecedents to behavior fits the data well. The model accounted for 22 per cent of the variance in intentions to cheat and 47 per cent of the variance in self‐reported cheating.

The primary limitations of this research are the cross‐sectional research design, the self‐selected sample, and the single source of survey data.

The study extends the TPB model in the prediction of misconduct behavior. Attitudes, subjective norms, behavioral control, intentions and justifications were related to cheating behaviors. Academic misconduct may be reduced by shaping attitudes toward cheating, changing perceptions of subjective norms regarding the prevalence of cheating, and lowering students' perceptions of their control of cheating by, for example, emphasis on the consequences of getting caught. Understanding and reducing academic misconduct are important for promoting ethical behavior and values in future worker and organization leaders.

Identification of factors that influence academic misconduct is an important aspect of professional development research, given its link to workplace misconduct. To date, academic misconduct research has been primarily empirically‐ rather than theory‐driven. The current study identifies factors that contribute to academic misconduct by extending an established theoretical model of behavior.

This study aims to examine the relationship between officer characteristics, productivity levels, situational context, the complaint process and allegations of police misconduct in a Midwestern municipal police agency.

Data were collected for all formal and informal complaints filed against patrol officers from 2002‐2005. Demographic information, arrest, citation and report data, as well as data regarding the number of officers on scene during the police citizen contact that resulted in the complaint were utilized in these analyses.

The analyses in this study demonstrate that more aggressive officers – those who issue a greater number of citations – will generate a greater number of complaints of misconduct. Two variables explain the processing of formal complaints: number of officers present and the nature of the complaint. Further, the analyses indicate that informal complaints are a viable source of data and that the collection and archival of informal complaints can be a useful indicator for internal control of police misconduct.

The findings indicate that police departments must employ internal mechanisms, such as early warning systems to deal with police misconduct. Internal monitoring of police conduct may be the best way to detect misconduct as relying solely on citizen complaints as measures of police misconduct does not appear to be warranted.

This paper adds to the literature on complaints of police misconduct by including several variables not previously examined. Further, this study analyzes both formal and informal complaints; there are no other studies that examine informal complaints of misconduct. This study also investigates the complaint process, including frequency, nature, disposition and discipline administered following disposition of formal complaints.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between social control (adult social bonds) and police misconduct.

Multiple regression methods are used to analyze survey data from a sample of 101 first-line police supervisors. A consequence-based measure is used to capture social bonds and workplace deviance is measured as the self-reported likelihood of future misconduct.

Police supervisors reported varying likelihoods of future workplace deviance across four acts of misconduct. Social control was found to be negatively related to three of the four acts, which provides general support for the theory and study hypothesis.

The results are discussed in terms of research and policy implications.

Acknowledging important gaps in the literature, this study explores the validity of social control theory for explaining police misconduct.

This paper aims to focus on corruption and misconduct evidenced from local government investigation reports in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

A corruption and misconduct taxonomy was developed and the audit committee’s role was empirically tested.

The empirical findings exhibited low support for audit committees overseeing corruption and misconduct allegations. The respondents generally considered that the chief executive was the appropriate person to manage investigations.

The findings from the local government investigations and the empirical research emphasises the significance of culture and ethical practices to mitigate against corruption and misconduct. A culture of zero tolerance of corruption and misconduct was one of the best ways of a council demonstrating its integrity.

This paper offers a local government perspective on the behavioural factors which provide the organisational conditions for corruption and misconduct to become the norm.

The purpose of this paper is to review the extant published literature using traditional criminological theories in an effort to explain police misconduct.

This paper reflects a narrative meta-review of through a search of several academic databases (e.g. Criminal Justice Abstracts, Criminology: A SAGE Full Text Collection, EBSCO Host and PsychInfo). Twenty-nine studies, across six theoretical perspectives, were identified and reviewed.

The extant research generally suggests that traditional criminological theory is useful in explaining misconduct.

The findings call on agencies to continually strengthen their recruiting and hiring processes to select recruits with suitable characteristics, and to improve their early warning systems to detect officers with patterns of problematic behavior. Also, the findings call for multiple avenues of future scholarship, namely, in theory development/integration and in refining the measurement of police misconduct.

This paper will be useful for researchers who wish to further explore the etiology of misconduct, and for police administrators who wish to reduce the prevalence of such behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the fraud triangle, Machiavellianism, academic misconduct and corporate social responsibility (CSR) proclivity of students.

The present study surveyed 471 university students. The study was cross-sectional and employed structural equation modelling in statistical modelling.

The study provides evidence that perceived opportunity to cheat in examinations is the single most important factor accounting for significant variations in rationalization and academic misconduct. Similarly, low Machiavellians significantly get inclined to CSR ideals. The fraud triangle alone accounts for 36 per cent of the variations in academic misconduct, hence the error variance is 64 per cent of academic misconduct itself. This error variance increases to 78 per cent when a combination of perceived opportunity, rationalization, Machiavellianism is considered. Moreover, both Machiavellianism and academic misconduct account for 17 per cent of variations in students’ proclivity to CSR ideals.

Results imply that creating a setting that significantly increases a student's anticipated negative affect from academic misconduct, or effectively impedes rationalization ex ante, might prevent some students from academic misconduct in the first place and then they will become good African corporate citizens. Nevertheless, although the unit of analysis was students, these were from a single university – something akin to a case study. The quantitative results should therefore be interpreted with this shortcoming in mind.

This paper contributes to the search for predictors of academic misconduct in the African setting and as a corollary, for a theory explaining academic misconduct. Those students perceiving opportunity to cheat in examinations are also able to rationalize and hence engage in academic misconduct. This rationalization is enhanced or reduced through Machiavellianism.

This paper aims to examine academic dishonesty and research misconduct, two forms of academic fraud, and provides suggestions for future research informed by criminological theory.

After reviewing prior literature, this paper outlines four general criminological theories that can explain academic fraud.

While criminological theory has been applied to some studies of academic dishonesty, research misconduct has rarely been examined within a broader theoretical context.

This paper provides a blueprint for future theoretically informed analyses of academic fraud.

This paper represents a unique attempt to apply general criminological theories to diverse forms of fraud in higher education settings.

Drawing on hegemonic masculinity theory, this study provides evidence supporting how gender, race and sexual identity, may shape the rates of sexual misconduct reporting, by keeping those targets who traditionally enjoy positions of power (i.e. white, cisgender men) silent.

Across 3,230 gender harassment, 890 sexual advance harassment and 570 sexual assault incidents that occurred within a traditionally masculine organization, the authors conducted tests of independence and hierarchical regression analyses to examine whether targets' social identity characteristics (i.e. sex, race, sexuality and gender alignment), predicted the reporting of sexual misconduct.

Although reporting rates varied based on the type of incident, white men were less likely than their colleagues to report workplace sexual misconduct. In general, men were approximately half as likely as women to report. Lower rates of reporting were similarly seen among all white (vs BIPOC) targets and all cisgender and heterosexual (vs LGBT) targets, when controlling for other identity characteristics.

Research on sexual misconduct has largely privileged the experiences of (white, heterosexual) women, despite knowledge that men, too, can experience this mistreatment. This research broadens this lens and challenges the notion that sexual misconduct reporting rates are uniform across employee groups. By articulating how the pressures of hegemonic masculinity serve to silence certain targets – including and especially white, cisgender men – the authors provide means of better understanding and addressing workplace sexual misconduct underreporting.