How Does Professionalization Moderate the Effect of a Department’s Educational Profile on Police Misconduct?

• In Event: The Role of Education in Policing

Abstract

Over the past 50 years, amid intermittent tides of public furor over police misconduct, reformers and federal commissions have sought, as one part of the solution, to professionalize the police by raising officer educational standards (see President’s Commission, 1967; President’s Task Force, 2015). After several decades of research, however, it remains unclear how well this proposition applies to the policing profession. While much research on this topic has focused on officer-level correlates of misconduct, relatively little scholarly attention has addressed the effect of officer education on agency-level outcomes (King, 2009). Thus, the ability of departments to identify, hire, and train officers who are qualified civil servants remains a challenging task. This study uses data from a national study of police departments—the Police Use of Force: Official Reports, Citizen Complaints, and Legal Consequences project—to expand upon prior research by investigating how organizational factors such as officer training and agency diversity moderate the association between a department’s educational profile and police misconduct complaints. We conclude with a discussion of the research and policy implications of our results.

Authors

• Thaddeus Lateef Johnson, Georgia State University

• Eric Sevigny, Georgia State University