Does Discipline Fairness Matter for the Police Code of Silence? Answers from the U.S. Supervisors and Line Officers

• In Event: Current Issues of Police Integrity

Abstract

This paper uses a survey of U.S. 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 eleven police agencies located in the Midwest and on the East Coast of the United States. 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. Our results indicate that the code of silence varies across the scenarios, both for supervisors and line officers. While the supervisor code and the line officer code differ substantially, they are the most identical 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.

Authors

• Robert Peacock, Michigan State University

• Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, Michigan State University

• Maria Haberfeld, John Jay College of Criminal Justice