Conflict of interest and police: An unavoidable problem

Abstract

Over last twenty years or so, conflicts of interest have come to be recognized as a significant problem in many professions. A recent book, Conflict of Interest in Professions edited by Michael Davis and Andrew Stark, (1) examined problems that conflict of interest may create in a wide range of professions, from law and government, through engineering, journalism, academia, financial markets, and health care. In this essay I examine problems that conflicts of interest may cause in what is now being recognized as an emerging profession, profession of policing. Although conflicts of interest in this area share many of problems of conflict of interest in other professions, I suggest that there are features of police work that lead to conflict-of-interest problems that are in some ways unique and not amenable to resolution by means of normal methods. It is this fact that leads me to suggest that conflict of interest is an unavoidable problem in policing. What is a Conflict of Interest? In introduction to Conflict of Interest in Professions, Michael Davis provides what he terms the standard of a conflict of interest: On standard view, P has a conflict of interest if, and only if, (1) P is in a relationship with another requiring P to exercise judgment on other's behalf and (2) P has a (special) interest tending to interfere with proper exercise of judgment in that relationship ... on standard view, an interest is any influence, loyalty, concern, emotion, or other feature of a situation tending to make P's judgment (in that situation) less reliable than it would normally be, without rendering P incompetent. (2) The fact that a conflict of interest is a tendency is extremely important. Conflicts of interest do not always affect judgment, as P may be able to exercise his or her judgment impartially despite special interest. A conflict of interest is thus different from mere bias, though conflicts of interest and bias are often discussed together. As Davis notes, a known bias can (generally) be compensated for without difficulty, since it has a predictable effect. But conflict of interest is not bias, but is rather a tendency toward bias, which means that it is both more difficult to predict effect of conflict of interest upon judgment, and more difficult to compensate for its effect. One major difficulty in discussing conflicts of interest arises out of term itself. The mere fact that two interests clash in some way, that is, that interests are in conflict, does not mean that there is actually any conflict of interest in technical sense of term. My interest in spending time with my children may conflict with my interest in writing this paper, but this does not constitute a conflict of interest, for I am not required to exercise judgment on another person's behalf. In police work most conflicts of interest involve a conflict between a role and an interest (for example, a conflict between a police officer's role as an enforcer of law and officer's interest in maintaining a particular friendship), or between two roles (for example, conflict between an officer's role as a police officer and officer's role, while off duty, as an investigative consultant) rather than a simple conflict between two interests. It is important to remember that conflicts of interest arise only when a person is required to exercise judgment on behalf of another. If no judgment is required in a particular situation, then a conflict of interest will not pose a problem in that situation. Similarly, if I am required to exercise judgment, but only on my own behalf, and not on behalf of another person, organization, or institution, then conflicts of interest are not a problem in that situation either. A Problem with Standard View The standard view appears to allow too much. …