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Police Corruption in Thirty Agencies in the United States, 1997

Metadata Updated: November 28, 2023

This study examined police officers' perceptions of and tolerance for corruption. In contrast to the popular viewpoint that police corruption is a result of moral defects in the individual police officer, this study investigated corruption from an organizational viewpoint. The approach examined the ways rules are communicated to officers, how rules are enforced by supervisors, including sanctions for violation of ethical guidelines, the unspoken code against reporting the misconduct of a fellow officer, and the influence of public expectations about police behavior. For the survey, a questionnaire describing 11 hypothetical scenarios of police misconduct was administered to 30 police agencies in the United States. Specifically, officers were asked to compare the violations in terms of seriousness and to assess the level of sanctions each violation of policies and procedures both should and would likely receive. For each instance of misconduct, officers were asked about the extent to which they supported agency discipline for it and their willingness to report it. Scenarios included issues such as off-duty private business, free meals, bribes for speeding, free gifts, stealing, drinking on duty, and use of excessive force. Additional information was collected about the officers' personal characteristics, such as length of time in the police force (in general and at their agency), the size of the agency, and the level of rank the officer held.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: us-pd

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date August 18, 2021
Metadata Updated Date November 28, 2023

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOJ JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date August 18, 2021
Metadata Updated Date November 28, 2023
Publisher National Institute of Justice
Maintainer
Identifier 3716
Data First Published 1999-08-18T00:00:00
Language eng
Data Last Modified 2005-11-04T00:00:00
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 011:21
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://www.justice.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id b85feb64-d23f-43ef-b3d7-43c16a4727a1
Harvest Source Id 3290e90a-116f-42fc-86ac-e65521ef3b68
Harvest Source Title DOJ JSON
License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
Program Code 011:060
Publisher Hierarchy Office of Justice Programs > National Institute of Justice
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 72c16e636a7e2e103b65a76105bf12a77d5880b9f4dea932e72ebba8b9b73d5a
Source Schema Version 1.1

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