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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.

This study adds to the developing literature on how coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) affected policing. Unlike prior research, which focused on police agencies, the authors focus on the perceptions and experiences of police officers. Specifically, about changes in workload or activities during the peak of the pandemic compared to prior to the pandemic. Additionally, officers report on changes in potential second-order effects resulting in changes from the pandemic.

The data come from the survey responses of 167 police officers from seven police agencies of various sizes from around the USA. The authors assessed mean level differences between organizations using a general linear model/ANOVA approach and report a standardized effect size.

There is a considerable heterogeneity in police officers' perceptions of organizational and operational changes made by their police agencies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that perceptions of some changes were more strongly by the agency than were others. The study’s results show there are substantive differences in how police officers from different police agencies viewed these operational and organizational changes (i.e. between agency differences). Most of the variance was primarily explained by differences between police officers within the same agency (i.e. within organization differences).

This study moves beyond the monolithic approach to studying how the pandemic affected the police agency and moves to asking officers about their experiences with these changes and the second-order effects of these changes.

This study examines the effects of diffuse support for the police, specific support for the police, experience with the police, and demographic characteristics on citizens' own expressed willingness to report police misconduct. The authors surveyed immigrants from Croatia who now reside in Germany and Ireland to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relative role these factors play in regard to immigrants' willingness to report misconduct in Croatia.

The study, based on a survey of 358 Croatian immigrants to Germany and 226 Croatian immigrants to Ireland, utilizes multivariate logistic regression models that assess factors affecting the respondents' expressed willingness to report police misconduct in their homeland and their current countries of residence.

The authors' multivariate models reveal that diffuse support for the police (e.g. confidence in the police and perceptions of widespread police corruption) plays a strong and significant role in explaining the respondents' willingness to report misconduct in the authors' initial models. However, the direct effect of the diffuse support completely disappears in most of the models once scenario-specific police integrity measures (e.g. views of expected discipline severity and estimates whether police officers would report misconduct) are included as well. With the exception of age, other demographic characteristics and contact with the police were not systematically and significantly related to the respondents' willingness to report.

This is the first empirical study to provide an in-depth exploration of various factors associated with the citizens' willingness to report police misconduct.

This paper examines whether dissimilarities in societal cultures impact the path by which a key component of organizational culture—supervisory procedural justice (SPJ)—influences police officer compliance with police agency rules.

The study utilized structural equation modeling across a data set of 1,189 Croatian and Taiwan police officers to test whether a societal value (individualism/collectivism) impacts the role of three intermediary variables (trust in the public, job satisfaction and pro-organization initiative) in a procedural justice model of officer compliance with the rules.

The study found that, despite a strong statistical similarity in the individual attitudes of Croatian and Taiwan police officers, the intermediary variables in the model significantly differed between the two countries. Most notably, the role of trust in the public and pro-organization initiative supported past research suggesting that collectivist versus individualistic societal cultures lead to divergent organizational attitudes and policing outcomes.

This is the first empirical study to compare the impact of societal values on a model of SPJ on officer compliance with agency rules.

Though contemporary police organizational behavior scholars often limit their measure of organizational justice to just supervisory procedural justice, this study examines how the additional dimensions of supervisor trustworthiness and peer procedural justice compare with procedural justice in their role shaping police outcomes.

A survey of 638 police officers in Zagreb, Croatia, was used to regress three separate dimensions of organizational justice on key officer attitudes toward their duties.

The authors found that supervisor trustworthiness and peer procedural justice were the dominant predictors of officers' rule compliance and trust in the public.

The findings suggest that police scholars and practitioners seeking to better understand the role of officer judgments on resisting agency reform should consider the precedent in corporate behavior research to specifically test the unique roles of multiple components of police organizational behavior on policing outcomes.

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 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.

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.