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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.

For some time now, research conducted in the field of human behavior and criminology has pertained to the contemporary question as to whether there are any relevant differences between the genders regarding their integrity and opinions held and, if so, which of these lead to different behaviors. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether there are any gender differences in willingness to report police misconduct and if so, what is the nature of these differences.

In spring 2011, the study was conducted on a representative sample of 408 frontline Slovenian police officers (87.3 percent were male and 12.7 percent were female). The assessment of the code of silence was conducted using the method developed by Klockars and Kutnjak Ivković (2004), and consisted of 14 hypothetical scenarios describing a range of various forms of police misconduct, from those that merely give the appearance of a conflict of interest, to incidents of bribery and theft. One of the questions explored in relation to the police code of silence was the police officer’s willingness to report misconduct.

Authors discovered significant differences in 11 of the 14 analyzed cases on the willingness to report police misconduct. Interestingly, female police officers were less willing than their male colleagues to report different forms of police misconduct. Female police officers are less willing to report police corruption in seven cases e.g. shooting runaway suspect, supervisor abusing his/her power, excessive force – punching a suspect, falsification of evidence, supervisor not prevent beating a suspect, police officer take bribes, and doing nothing when juveniles paint graffiti. The results were further analyzed from the group dynamic in Slovenian police point of view. The survey findings could be useful for police chiefs, leaders, and managers who want to achieve the main objective of every modern police organization: to prevent corruption and increase social responsibility.

The study analyzes, comprehensively and originally, whether the female police officers differ from their male colleagues in the level of police integrity and willingness to report the cases of police corruption and/or other forms of police misbehavior.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to partially replicate and extend the work of Klockars et al. and others on police integrity by examining how individual, organizational, and ecological factors affect police supervisors’ perceptions of police misconduct and willingness to report fellow officers’ misconduct.

Surveys containing 17 scenarios developed by Klockars et al. (2000, 2004, 2006) were administered to 553 ranking officers attending training at the Bill Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas from June 1, 2009 to March 1, 2010 and employed by municipal police departments, county sheriff’s departments, and constable agencies.

Results suggest that individual and organizational factors affect supervisor willingness to blow the whistle on underling misconduct, although their effects varied by seriousness of the behavior.

The current project partially replicates and extends prior studies of factors affecting police integrity by surveying supervisors, measuring their willingness to whistle blow, and including variables in statistical models that prior studies have not included.

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 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.

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.

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.