Police Integrity in Armenia

Abstract

The Armenian police are a centralized police agency adjunct to the Government of Armenia. This chapter explores the contours of police integrity among the Armenian police officers. The chapter relies on the police integrity survey conducted in 2013. The sample of 969 police officers evaluated hypothetical scenarios describing various forms of police misconduct. We analyze the results across several measures of police integrity, such as the police officers’ knowledge of official rules, evaluations of the seriousness of police misconduct, views about appropriate and expected discipline, and the code of silence. The results show that most of our respondents recognized behaviors described in the hypothetical scenarios as rule violating and evaluated them to be serious. On the other hand, they thought that only lenient discipline is appropriate for such forms of misconduct. At the same time, they mostly expected their police agencies to mete out lenient discipline, indicating the presence of a relaxed disciplinary environment. Finally, our findings detect the presence of a strong code of silence, providing protection even for the behaviors evaluated to be rule violating and very serious.