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To examine the degree of homogeneity of police officers' evaluations of seriousness of police misconduct across various countries.

The authors surveyed police officers from Croatia (N=1,649), Finland (N=378), and the USA (3,235). Respondents evaluated ten scenarios describing police corruption and one scenario describing the use of excessive force by indicating how seriously they evaluated each described behavior.

Line officers' and supervisors' evaluations of seriousness of the 11 scenarios differ substantially across the three countries. The extent of disagreement varies across cases: opinions are the most heterogeneous for the least serious cases and most homogeneous for the most serious ones. By contrast, relative evaluations of seriousness – rankings of cases in each country – are quite similar across the three countries.

Future research could analyze how perceptions of seriousness vary across police agencies' characteristics (e.g. type, geographic location, and size) and respondents' characteristics (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity, age, or education), as well as forms of police misconduct (e.g. perjury, and racial profiling).

Heterogeneity of evaluations of seriousness across the three countries suggests that country‐ and/or agency‐wide environments play a key role in the police officers' views about seriousness of misconduct. Consequently, by controlling agency‐related factors, police administrators may influence the level of seriousness with which police officers view police corruption.

This paper shows that a larger environment plays a crucial role in forming police officers' perceptions of seriousness of police misconduct. The findings also imply that there is shared hierarchy of seriousness of various cases of police misconduct across police officers from three diverse countries.

Relying on a moral development theoretical framework, the purpose of this paper is to argue that the perceived seriousness of a particular behavior is a reflection of one’s broader attitudes toward ethical behaviors. Attitudes toward ethical behavior should provide both an elaborated explanation for the relationship between the perceived seriousness of a behavior and the likelihood of reporting a fellow officer for that behavior, as well as an alternative approach to the measurement and assessment of police integrity outcomes.

Using data from a sample of 499 Philadelphia police officers, the current study uses a modified fifteen item ethics scale first developed by Hyams (1990) and used by others, in order to examine its relation to integrity outcomes. The paper provides a full descriptive and measurement analysis of the scale and then explores its utility in understanding integrity outcomes through a variety of hypothetical scenarios.

While the perceived seriousness of a behavior is strongly predictive of the likelihood of reporting a fellow officer who engages in that behavior, the findings suggest that seriousness may be a proxy for attitudes toward ethical behaviors.

While Klockars et al.’s approach to the measurement of police integrity has been an important contribution to integrity research, other measures of police integrity such as attitudes toward ethical behavior are also useful as they move us conceptually from assessing attitudes toward ethical behavior to their antecedents – the strength of underlying value premises shaping subsequent attitudes.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether indicating victims of sexual attacks actively resisted their attacker or froze during their assault affected perceptions of victim blame, perpetrator blame and seriousness of the crime. We also tested whether victim and perpetrator gender or participants’ rape myth endorsement moderated the outcomes.

This study was a cross-sectional, vignette survey study with a 2 × 2 between-participants experimental design. Participants read a mock police report describing an alleged rape with a female or male victim who either resisted or froze, while perpetrator gender was adjusted heteronormatively.

Freezing and male victims were blamed more than resisting and female victims. Perpetrators were blamed more when the victim resisted, but male and female perpetrators were blamed equally. Seriousness of the crime was higher for male perpetrators and when the victim resisted. Female, but not male, rape myth acceptance moderated the relationship between victim behaviour and outcome variables.

This study highlights the influence of expectations about victim behaviour on perceptions of rape victims and the pervasive influence of rape myths when evaluating female rape victims. The data is drawn from the German border region of the Netherlands, which is an especially valuable population given the evolving legal definitions of rape in both countries.

The purpose of this paper is to test the theory of police integrity, particularly its fourth dimension, on a centralized police agency and to assess the degree to which levels of police integrity are related to the characteristics of the larger environment.

In 2008, a stratified representative sample of 945 Croatian police officers from ten police administrations evaluated 11 hypothetical scenarios describing a range of various forms of police misconduct. The questionnaire measures officer views regarding scenario seriousness, appropriate and expected discipline, and willingness to report the misconduct.

Bivariate analyses show that police officers’ evaluations of seriousness differed across categories of police administrations for more than one-half of the scenarios. Multivariate analyses reveal that, once organizational predictors are entered into the models, community characteristics remain significant predictors of seriousness evaluations for only a few scenarios.

The analytical strategies were limited by the number of police administrations in the country.

The results indicate that levels of police integrity in large, centralized organizations vary across units and that the characteristics of the communities the police are a contributing factor to these differences. At the same time, organizational characteristics carry substantial weight.

Prior studies of police integrity focussed on the organizational aspects (the first three dimensions of the theory); the present paper extends the literature to ascertain the importance of the larger environment and its characteristics for levels of police integrity (the fourth dimension of the police integrity theory).

This study aims at exploring the role of perceived disease seriousness in consumers’ preference for generic versus branded drugs, by shedding light on new factors impacting consumer purchase behaviour for pharmaceutical products.

An exploratory study based on a quantitative analysis has been conducted with a sample of 100 participants who have been presented with two different scenarios: one related to more serious disease (as in cardiological disease) and one related to less serious disease (as in the seasonal flu). This paper considered Italy as a research setting where the recent mandatory prescription of the active ingredient by doctors leaves the final purchase decision in consumers’ hands

Results show that, although consumers are free to choose whether to buy a branded or a generic prescribed active ingredient, their choice is mainly driven by the role of the brand. Consumers’ intention to buy generic drugs is higher in the case of diseases perceived as less serious, while the intention to buy branded drugs is higher in the case of disease perceived as more serious.

This study contributes to marketing research and practice by proposing that consumers’ perceived seriousness of their disease should be considered as a further factor in identifying new marketing strategies in those contexts in which the choice between branded or generic drugs is free.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of anticipatory procedural justice, seriousness/type of conflict, and design of ombudsman processes with intentions to use ombudsman processes to resolve disputes.

The study was a 3 (type of conflict with three scenarios nested in each type)×3 (design of ombuds system). Subjects read scenarios and filled out Likert type survey items related to seriousness of conflict, anticipatory procedural justice, and intentions to use ombuds processes.

Perceived seriousness and anticipatory procedural justice were significantly related to intention to use ombuds process, but design of ombuds process was not.

This study was limited to scenarios of academic conflict. Research should be extended to experienced conflicts and conflicts in other contexts.

Potential users of ombuds processes are more concerned with principles of fairness and justice than the specific elements of how dispute systems are designed. While the design of a system needs to insure disputants perceive it to be fair, institutions concerned with resolving disputes between/among members should be more concerned with having a system than about promoting specific details about the design of that system.

This study advances both the study of ombuds processes/design and anticipatory procedural justice. This study provides unique findings related to both the design of ombuds processes and the conditions under which disputants might utilize the process. Additionally, procedural justice is demonstrated to be useful in forming decisions about use of processes, not just evaluations after processes have been used.

The purpose of this paper is to explore Australian police officers’ perceptions of unethical conduct scenarios with the aim of understanding unwillingness to report infractions.

The responses of 845 officers were compared across 11 scenarios to explore variation in the extent to which they understood the behaviour to violate policy and their hypothetical willingness, or unwillingness, to report the behaviour. Particularly, it was hypothesised that non-reporters may justify their inaction based on the misperception that other officers hold even less ethical beliefs.

Five scenarios emerged as least likely to be reported, with a substantial minority of officers stating their decision was despite their understanding that the behaviour constituted a policy violation. Contrary to predictions, these “non-reporters” were aware they were less likely to report than their colleagues, but believed they held the same views as their colleagues in terms of the seriousness of scenarios. Comparisons between non-reporters and other survey participants, however, found this belief to be false, with non-reporters viewing the scenarios as significantly less serious. A perceived self-other difference, along with a belief that others will report were shown to reduce the likelihood of not reporting.

The results are discussed in terms of increasing willingness to report misconduct through organisational efforts to communicate values and support officers to make ethical decisions.

The paper contributes to understanding the “code of silence” in perpetuating police misconduct and how it may be reduced.

Numerous studies have been done on various aspects of tax evasion in recent years. Some studies focus on compliance, while others examine more esoteric topics, such as optimum tax evasion. A third group of studies discusses theoretical issues, such as when tax evasion can be justified on moral grounds. A few studies have addressed the relative seriousness of tax evasion compared to other infractions. The purpose of this paper is in the latter category.

Wave 6 of the World Values Surveys (2010-2014) asked hundreds of questions to participants in 57 countries. One of those questions asked whether it was justifiable to evade taxes if one had the opportunity to do so. Another question asked whether it was justifiable to pay cash to avoid paying taxes. It also asked questions about other ethical issues such as bribery, avoiding a fare on public transport, claiming government benefits and buying stolen goods. The present study included those questions in a survey that was distributed to 485 students and faculty members at the University of Exeter in England to determine the relative seriousness of each act. They were asked to select a number from 1 (never justifiable) to 10 (always justifiable) to show the extent of their agreement or disagreement with the commission of the six acts. The goal was to determine how serious tax evasion was compared to other acts that might be considered unethical. One-sample t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) methods were used for the data analysis.

The results of the study show that the act considered least serious was paying cash for services to avoid tax followed in order of seriousness by avoiding a fare on public transport, cheating on taxes if you have a chance, buying stolen goods, claiming benefits without entitlement and, with least justification, accepting a bribe in the course of one’s duty. Some interesting results emerged by examining the responses of different groups. Like other studies, the results indicate older groups tend to have a higher respect for the law than younger ones. This was true for the cheating on taxes possibility, but the 30-49 years age group were more opposed than the other two groups to paying cash for services to avoid taxes. In terms of gender, females were significantly more opposed than males to cheating on taxes if you have a chance. The respondents who are married were more opposed to the six acts, including of course, the two tax ones, than non-married persons. There was also evidence that the level of higher education makes a difference to individuals’ opinions.

This is an important study in relation to England. It is the first study to do so. The relative seriousness of tax evasion is compared to other offenses. Mean scores are used to rank the various offenses in terms of relative seriousness. Various demographics are also examined to see whether some groups view tax evasion as more serious than other groups. Those demographics included gender, age, academic major, education level and marital status.

We examine the effect of an offender’s occupational status on criminal sentencing recommendations using a vignette experiment that crosses the offender’s occupational status (white-collar vs blue- or pink-collar) and the crime label, with one label (overcharging) associated with white-collar offenders and the other (robbery) associated with lower-status offenders. We expect negative and potent post-crime impressions of the offender and the crime to increase perceptions of criminality and, in turn, the recommended sentence. We term these negative and potent impressions “criminality scores.” Drawing on affect control theory (ACT) impression formation equations, we generate criminality scores for the offenders and the crimes in each condition and, using those scores as a guide, predict that white-collar offenders and offenders described as “robbing” will receive a higher recommended sentence. We also expect eight perceptual factors central to theories of judicial sentencing mediate these relationships.

We test these hypotheses with a vignette experiment, administered to female university students, that varies a male offender’s occupation and the word used to describe his crime.

Consistent with our ACT-derived predictions, white-collar offenders and offenders described as robbing received a higher recommended sentence. But, contrary to predictions, only one perceptual factor, crime seriousness, mediated these effects, and the mediation was partial.

Our findings suggest the perpetrator’s post-crime appearance of negativity and power offer a valuable supplement to theories of judicial sentencing.

This study is the first to test the hypothesis that sentencing disparities may be due to the way the perpetrators’ sociodemographic attributes shape their post-crime appearance of negativity and power.

Following the theory of police integrity, the purpose of this paper is to explore empirically the contours of police integrity in South Africa using survey of the three South African police agency types.

During the period from 2010 to 2012, a police integrity survey was used to measure the contours of police integrity among 871 police officers across South Africa, covering all three police agency types. The questionnaire contains descriptions of 11 scenarios, covering different forms of police misconduct, followed by seven questions measuring officer views of scenario seriousness, the appropriate and expected discipline, and willingness to report the misconduct.

The results show that the respondents from the three police agency types were about equally likely to recognize behaviors as rule-violating and, in most scenarios, evaluated these scenarios to be of the same level of seriousness. The contours of the code of silence were very similar as well. The authors found the largest and most systematic differences in the respondents’ perceptions of disciplinary environment, with the traffic respondents expecting harsher disciplinary environments than either the South African Police Service or metro police respondents.

Similar sample group sizes would have been preferred, although the current sample group proportions are certainly representative of a collective, agency size comparison.

Although the respondents from the three police agency types expressed similar views of misconduct seriousness and their willingness to report, and were as likely to recognize these behaviors as rule-violating, their views depicted markedly different disciplinary environments. These results clearly support the critical importance of consistent enforcement of official rules.

Whereas several integrity studies have explored the country’s national police service, empirical studies on the integrity of the other South African police agency types are non-existent.