Measuring police integrity among urban and rural police in Armenia: from local results to global implications

Abstract

This paper explores variations in police integrity between police agencies within a centralized police system. The respondents surveyed in this study are 460 Armenian police officers assigned to work in two large police departments, Yerevan and Lori. Yerevan is the Armenian capital and Lori serves the Lori Region, one of the rural parts of the country. The respondents evaluated 11 hypothetical scenarios describing cases of police misconduct. We found relatively few differences between the police officers serving the capital and police officers assigned to a rural region in their knowledge of official rules, views about misconduct seriousness, views about appropriate discipline, and their expressed willingness to report misconduct. On the other hand, despite identical official rules, we found consistent and large differences in the perceptions of the disciplinary environment prevailing in the two police agencies. Our research expands the existing knowledge of centralized police systems and suggests that, despite many shared features, police agencies within the same system can develop different expectations of integrity.