Official Misconduct Research Articles

Police accountability and officer misconduct: moderation effects by officers’ gender and race for body-worn cameras and an early intervention system

PurposeMuch empirical work has examined body-worn cameras (BWCs), and there is a growing interest in early intervention systems (EISs) in policing. Whether the effects of these accountability mechanisms are stable by officer gender and race remains unknown – important assumptions of each program despite differences in misconduct levels and policing practices by subgroups of officers (i.e. male vs female officers, White vs Black and Hispanic officers).Design/methodology/approachThe current study uses data from a large Southwestern police department to examine the influence of BWCs and an EIS on alleged and sustained patrol officer misconduct between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2020.FindingsIn line with expectations and the intended goal of these programs, the effects of BWCs and the EIS on officer misconduct were stable by officer gender and race.Originality/valueGiven the importance of addressing officer misconduct to build and maintain community trust and the rapid expansion of BWCs and EISs across the United States, it is vital that police departments consider the accountability programs they implement and the equity of these programs. The current study provides insight into this process in one agency and offers policy implications and directions for future research.

Official Misconduct – An Entrepreneurial Explanation

Official Misconduct – An Entrepreneurial Explanation

Stigma or Support? How Gender, Race, and Intersectionality Impact Perceptions of Exonerees

Little research has examined the gendered nature of wrongful convictions and how the intersectionality of gender and race impacts perceptions of exonerees and support for reintegration services. With two vignette experiments, we assess laypeople’s perceptions of female or male, Black or White exonerees (Study 1 and 2) who were wrongfully convicted due to official misconduct or a false confession (Study 2) in varying child-victim cases. When wrongfully convicted of a violent homicide (Study 1), White female exonerees were viewed less favorably than Black females and White males were viewed least favorably. However, in a no-crime Shaken Baby Syndrome case (Study 2), false confessors were viewed least favorably, but gender and race did not impact perceptions. We provide potential explanations for these findings and implications for exonerees’ reintegration experiences.

Time lost as a result of wrongful conviction: the impact of race and official misconduct across offense categories

Wrongful convictions represent a significant form of injustice. Prior studies have described the impact of suspect and case characteristics on the likelihood of wrongful conviction. Less is known about the relative influence of these factors, particularly suspect race and official misconduct, on time lost following wrongful conviction, or the extent to which these relationships vary by conviction type. The current study addresses these questions through application of negative binomial regression and Clogg tests to cases of wrongful conviction for murder, sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and drug possession listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (n = 2349). Our findings indicate the relative influence of suspect race and official misconduct on time lost varies by type of conviction.

Incarceration without Dehumanization: Public Support for Policies to Reduce Correctional Officer Misconduct

Misconduct committed against incarcerated people is severe and dehumanizing. As the media has begun to shine light on correctional officer misconduct, corrections departments have started implementing policies to curb misbehavior, such as equipping officers with body-worn cameras. Using survey data from a national sample (N = 1,000), the study explores attitudes toward policies intended to reduce officer misconduct in prisons. We also test experimentally whether information about misconduct affects policy preferences. Notably, we examine how racial attitudes are related to policy preferences and whether they moderate the effect of information on the latter. Findings reveal most Americans support reforms, that support is lower among those holding racially resentful or White nationalist views, and that information about misconduct increases support. Finally, there is not a significant interaction between the information and the racial variables suggesting that everyone, regardless of racial views, may be persuaded to support reform efforts.

Police whistleblowing: A systematic review of the likelihood (and the barriers and facilitators) of the willingness of police officers to report the misconduct of fellow officers

IntroductionRecent high-profile cases of police misconduct have revealed that officers were often aware of misconduct, but remained silent, compromising public trust in law enforcement. Here, we systematically review ‘police whistleblowing’ literature to identify barriers and facilitators to officers challenging misconduct. MethodologyEmploying PRISMA guidelines, we systematically reviewed 118 relevant papers, extracting data and coding key variables including who the ‘target’ of the research was; whether reporting practices were studied, and whether practical solutions were offered. A reflexive thematic analysis then assessed consensus among researchers within the literature. ResultsFive themes - 1) knowledge and rules, 2) consequences, 3) interpersonal relations, 4) responsibility, and 5) police culture and group relations – emerged as barriers and facilitators to whistleblowing. The review revealed relatively poorer representation of internal police reporting structures and limited practical solutions, with only 40 papers proposing strategies, predominantly centred on training and education. DiscussionThis review highlights methodological limitations in existing research, with an overreliance on survey methods and a dominant focus on the characteristics of individuals over the structural constraints of reporting. The positive impacts of whistleblowing on policing as an institution and the development of practical strategies to overcome officers' reluctance to report misconduct remain largely unexplored.

Aggression and Academic Misconduct Among Justice-Involved Youth: The Roles of Facility Environment, Adverse Childhood Experiences and Social Competency

As compared to adult populations, there is a significant dearth of studies examining official misconduct among juveniles, leaving important gaps in our knowledge. Utilizing a sample of youth completing juvenile justice residential placement in Florida across four fiscal years ( n = 5739), the current study seeks to examine the joint effects of facility environment and individual characteristics on institutional misconduct, represented by aggression and academic misconduct in facilities. Academic Youths’ severity of criminal involvement, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), emotional and communication skills, and history of violence or drugs all contributed to explaining their aggression and academic misconduct in facilities. The level of institutional security consistently emerged as a significant predictor for academic misconduct and aggression. Aggression in facilities was more sensitive to the severity of ACEs. Policy implications and limitations are discussed.

A Study of the Criminal Victimization of Policewomen by Other Police Officers

Abstract Our research focuses on the criminal victimization of policewomen by other police officers. The data derive from a larger nationwide study on police crime, or cases in which police officers have been arrested for the perpetration of one or more criminal offenses. The current study identifies cases involving policewomen who are victims of police-perpetrated sexual harassment, official misconduct, stalking, indecent exposure, simple and aggravated assault, and rape. The specific goals of the research are three-fold: (1) explore the nature and character of police crimes perpetrated against policewomen, (2) describe cases of police crime perpetrated against policewomen that specifically involve some form of sexual violence, and (3) compare cases of police crime perpetrated against male and female police victims. Findings demonstrate the differential criminal victimization of policewoman, particularly in terms of cases involving police sexual violence (PSV) and officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV).

Intention to report misconduct of the Royal Malaysian Police: Examining perceived offence seriousness, perceived disciplinary fairness and perceived legitimacy

The intention to report misconduct is the inclination of police officers to disclose wrongdoing perpetrated by other officers, whereas the code of silence is an unwritten policy prohibiting officers from reporting the misbehaviour of their colleagues. Hence, officers have the choice either to remain silent or to report any misconduct by their colleagues. This article investigates the determinants of the intention to report misconduct by Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) officers from the commercial crime investigation department. Organizational theory is used to form the framework and develop the hypotheses. Three hypotheses are developed concerning the intention to report RMP officer misconduct using three elements: perceived offence seriousness, perceived disciplinary fairness and perceived legitimacy. Face-to-face and online survey questionnaires were used as data collection methods. In total, 170 questionnaires were distributed, and 151 completed questionnaires were useable. The questionnaire contained four scenarios illustrating various forms of misconduct; each contained seven questions measuring police officers’ perception and assessment of their intention to report, perceived seriousness of the offence, perceived disciplinary fairness and other intentions to report. Ordinal logistic regression analysis revealed that perceived offence seriousness and perceived legitimacy had a strong positive relationship with officer intentions to report misconduct. This study has important implications for national and international policymakers to find out how well officers understand their agency's rules on misconduct as well as their opinions about the seriousness of the different types of misconduct, the appropriate discipline for the misconduct and their willingness to report the behaviour.

Institutional factors driving citizen perceptions of AI in government: Evidence from a survey experiment on policing

AbstractLaw enforcement agencies are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence (AI)‐powered tools. While prior work emphasizes the technological features driving public opinion, we investigate how public trust and support for AI in government vary with the institutional context. We administer a pre‐registered survey experiment to 4200 respondents about AI use cases in policing to measure responsiveness to three key institutional factors: bureaucratic proximity (i.e., local sheriff versus national Federal Bureau of Investigation), algorithmic targets (i.e., public targets via predictive policing versus detecting officer misconduct through automated case review), and agency capacity (i.e., necessary resources and expertise). We find that the public clearly prefers local over national law enforcement use of AI, while reactions to different algorithmic targets are more limited and politicized. However, we find no responsiveness to agency capacity or lack thereof. The findings suggest the need for greater scholarly, practitioner, and public attention to organizational, not only technical, prerequisites for successful government implementation of AI.

Improbidade administrativa e um estudo acerca da amplitude e subjetividade do art. 11 da Lei nº 8.429/1992: análise de um recorte jurisprudencial do Tribunal de Justiça de Santa Catarina

Corruption and misconduct in public office, prevention and combat are constant objects of studies about Public Administration, considering the negative impact on the democratic order, public interests and public policies. There is not exactly a legal concept for acts of administrative improbity, but Law No. 8.429/92 – The Administrative Improbity Act – known as LIA, presents a typology so that its configuration can be identified, dividing them into: acts that imply illicit enrichment (art. 9); acts that cause damage to the Treasury (art. 10); and acts that violate the principles of Public Administration (art. 11). The present study is related to the research developed by the research project “Prevention and fight against corruption: the contribution of the systematization of data related to acts of administrative improbity in the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of Santa Catarina (2015-2017)”, developed by SAPIENTIA – Research Group for the Study of Social and Organizational Transformations. The incidence of the LIA articles was identified, used as grounds for the initial petition of actions of misconduct in public office, with the objective of identifying which of them were more frequent, being the target including the innovations brought by Law No. 14.230/21, which made profound changes to the legal regime for acts of administrative improbity. The relevance of the research is justified by the fact that it corresponds to a period that preceded the Law No. 13.655/18, which included provisions on legal certainty and efficiency in the creation and application of public law in the Introduction to the Norms of Brazilian Act.

How does technology‐based monitoring affect street‐level bureaucrats' behavior? An analysis of body‐worn cameras and police actions

AbstractBody‐worn cameras may produce varying effects on police behavior, depending on the agency‐specific accountability context in which the technology adoption is embedded. The cameras may encourage coercive police actions when acquired to incentivize performance, such as by protecting officers from false complaints. By contrast, when acquired to enhance procedural accountability, such as by enabling closer scrutiny of officer misconduct, the cameras may discourage coercive police actions. Based on this framework, this study examined the case of the New Orleans Police Department, an agency that implemented a body‐worn camera program to enhance both performance and procedural accountability. Results of Bayesian structural time‐series modeling with synthetic control show that the program increased the number of investigatory stops and follow‐up measures (i.e., frisk, search, citation, arrest) while decreasing the ratio of more‐to‐less coercive measures during stops (i.e., arrest/citation‐to‐warning ratio and search‐to‐frisk ratio). However, the program had a null effect on the minority‐to‐White suspect ratio, despite the agency's bias‐free policing initiative. The percentage of frisks and searches detecting drugs or weapons also declined. A broader implication of the findings is that technology‐based monitoring mechanisms are important, but not a silver bullet for improving the behavior of street‐level bureaucrats.

Police Go to Court: Police Officers as Witnesses/Defendants

Police officers regularly serve as government witnesses in criminal cases. In recent years, they have also increasingly found themselves as defendants facing criminal charges, civil lawsuits, or both. This article surveys scholarly literature on police officers as both witnesses and defendants, with a focus on sociological and legal barriers to understanding officer deception, assessing officer testimony, and holding officers accountable for misconduct. With respect to officers as witnesses, these barriers include the prevalence of police officer perjury, judicial deference to officers’ testimony, and laws and policies that prevent defendants from learning about or exposing officer misconduct and unreliability. Charging and suing officers present additional logistical and substantive questions. These questions include who should be responsible for investigating and deciding whether to prosecute police, what protocols should guide those investigations, whether police prosecutions meaningfully improve policing or ensure accountability, and what role the civil legal system should play in addressing police misconduct.

Identifying Patterns Across the Six Canonical Factors Underlying Wrongful Convictions

Research has established six “canonical” factors underlying wrongful convictions including: mistaken witness identification (MWID), false confession (FC), perjury or false accusation (P/FA), false or misleading forensic evidence (F/MFE), official misconduct (OM), and inadequate legal defense (ILD). While we know these factors do not occur in isolation, researchers have yet to examine the patterns across these six factors. In the present article, we apply latent class analysis to explore how these six factors might co-occur across known exonerations. Using data from the National Registry of Exonerations, we identify four latent classes by which the incidence rates across these six factors can be categorized. Among our noteworthy findings: 1) P/FA and OM often co-occur, 2) when MWIDs are high, the incidence of other factors is relatively low, and 3) false guilty pleas had the highest prevalence in a class that was generally associated with Failures to Investigate. Further implications are discussed.

The Untouchables

According to the current legal situation, the legal protection officers provided for in the Austrian legal system cannot be dismissed due to misconduct in office. The article first shows whether or which options for dismissing these state functionaries are permissible under Austrian constitutional law. In the following, going beyond this specific case, it is analyzed whether the Austrian federal constitution allows state officials to be given a legally inviolable position as a whole.

ПОВЕДІНКА ПОЛІЦЕЙСЬКОГО ЯК ПІДСТАВА ДИСЦИПЛІНАРНОГО СТЯГНЕННЯ: ЕТИЧНИЙ АСПЕКТ

The article is devoted to the study of the concept and composition of disciplinary misconduct of police officers. The author defines what constitutes a disciplinary offense and the object of a disciplinary offense of police officers, who are the subjects of legal relations resulting from a disciplinary offense, and the types of disciplinary offenses themselves. The author establishes that the object of disciplinary misconduct is the established procedure and the legal regime of service activities, the duties of police officers as officials provided for by each position both by the job description and by applicable law. The author outlines various aspects of police service which are affected by disciplinary misconduct, and in this regard, their direct objects are highlighted. For many years, service discipline has remained the key to effective service activity. This concept includes not only a conscious attitude to the performance of duties assigned to a police officer, but also ensuring high quality and efficiency of service activities, as well as rational distribution of service time. One of the determining factors of effective service activity of the Ukrainian police is the degree of compliance with official discipline by police officers. Given the fact that deviant behavior in law enforcement agencies cannot be completely eradicated, another factor that significantly affects the effectiveness of law enforcement practice is the degree of detection of violations of official discipline and the inevitability of bringing perpetrators to disciplinary responsibility. Not so long ago, Ukraine underwent an administrative reform aimed at building and developing a progressive system of public administration and improving the performance of the state apparatus. In the course of the reform, a key role was assigned to optimizing the functioning of executive authorities in the process of combating corruption. Particular attention was paid to the legal regulation of law enforcement agencies and their successful fulfillment of their tasks (which is directly ensured by strict observance of official discipline).

What Can Go Wrong When Everything is Right? Using Organizational Justice to Understand Police Misconduct and Improve Personnel Systems

Despite decades of attention paid to police reform, cases of office misconduct still continue to plague policing organizations. Assuming that organizations may still experience such officer malfeasance even when attempting to pursue best practices, we aim to explore how things can go wrong when everything else seems right. Specifically, we rely on trickle-down models of organizational justice, group engagement, and social identity to articulate how otherwise desirable organizational outcomes may produce detrimental outgroup biases. Based on our theoretical premise, we articulate specific changes that may be made to personnel systems that can avoid such officer misconduct in policing contexts.

Preserving Immunity for Reporters of Medical Child Abuse.

All American jurisdictions have laws protecting children from abuse and neglect. Mandated reporters, including health professionals, whether their suspicions ultimately are substantiated or unfounded, are entitled to immunity when their reports are entered in good faith. When harm takes the form of medical child abuse (MCA, also known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy or factitious disorder imposed on another), its origin is ambiguous, at least initially. Questions arise as to whether the caregiver intended to deceive medical professionals and if the condition improved when the child was separated from the caregiver. Clinicians may have an obligation to report MCA in difficult-to-diagnose cases or those where parents press for hospitalizations and procedures. Substantiated cases may lead to removal of children from homes and criminal prosecution of parents. This can result in backlash against the reporter by the parents, with claims of malpractice, official misconduct, intentional harm, fraud or conspiracy to commit fraud, defamation (libel or slander), or all of the above. This article examines case law regarding alleged departures from good-faith reporting of MCA and explores potential limitations to immunity provided to mandated reporters. The findings include no significant instances in which the immunity shield for good-faith reporting was pierced.

Exploring police sexual misconduct: an examination of a decade of incidents in a metropolitan agency

PurposePolice misconduct is a grave matter undermining public trust in law enforcement and police professionalism. While research has specified major forms and causal theories of police misconduct, especially regarding corruption and excessive force, scientific attention to police sexual misconduct (PSM) has been more limited and is addressed here. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.Design/methodology/approachThe current study was commissioned to examine PSM incidents (n = 50) between 2000 and 2009 in a large, metropolitan, police department in the USA. Data were extracted from agency internal affairs case files, personnel records and disciplinary histories for involved officers.FindingsAnalyses identified common factors and trends across officers, complainants and sexual misconduct events that were dichotomized per case substantiation and observed on a severity continuum from unobtrusive to criminal conduct.Originality/valueThough findings did not evidence a deviant subculture often implicated in the police literature, specific opportunities to reduce officer misconduct, including intensifying administrative sanctioning and other perceptual deterrence measures, were identified.

Book Review: Henry, J.S., Smoke but No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened. University of California Press. 2020

There are myriad reasons why innocent people become the target of an investigation then charged and convicted of a crime, and ultimately sentenced to prison. Instances such as these stem from factors that include witness misidentifications, forensic errors, mislabeling of natural and accidental events like crimes, official misconduct resulting in false confessions, and innocents’ acceptance of plea-bargaining deals to circumvent the possibility of a much harsher prison sentence if convicted in a trial setting (Alschuler, 2015; Reichart, 2016; Shaw & Porter, 2015). These reasons are but a few of the mitigating factors that serve to convict the innocent or may even encourage them into accepting the blame for crimes that they did not commit; and at times, being charged with or accepting responsibility for crimes that never existed in the first place (Henry, 2020). In her book, Smoke but No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened, Jessica S. Henry expounds upon