Studying police integrity

Police misconduct is a serious concern to scholars, police administrators, the media, and the general public. For a variety of reasons, a direct approach to the study of police misconduct poses considerable challenges. To ameliorate research hindrances, an alternative approach has been developed, focusing instead on its complement—police integrity. This chapter presents the theory of police integrity and the accompanying methodology. Each of the four dimensions of the theory, from the emphasis on official rules, curtailing of the code of silence, and the reliance on the internal control efforts, to the influence of the society at large, is described in detail. This chapter describes what an agency of high integrity should be doing along each of these dimensions. Next, a comprehensive account of the methodology has been presented and the two versions of the questionnaire described. The chapter also includes an extensive literature review of the studies that utilized the two questionnaires.