The prevalence and content of police discipline matrices

The purpose of this paper is to determine the prevalence of the use of discipline matrices across large US police departments, as well as to compare the structure and content of such matrices.

The study employs a two phase approach. Phase I consisted of a brief online survey of a stratified, random sample of police departments with 100 or more sworn police officers and asked about whether or not the agency employed a discipline matrix. Phase II consisted of requesting a copy of the matrix and corresponding materials from all agencies who indicated they employed a matrix, and analyzing the content of those matrices.

In total, 37 percent of responding agencies said they are using or are planning a discipline matrix, and the authors obtained a matrix from 32 police departments. The structure of the matrices and recommended discipline varied widely across these departments, indicating a lack of consensus on the development of this relatively new accountability tool.

The survey focussed on large police departments and the response rate was somewhat lower than other past national surveys.

Discipline matrices are employed to a greater extent than is implied by the current research literature. The lack of consensus and variability in policies around matrices indicates a need for more research which could contribute toward the formation of a model policy in this regard.

To date the prevalence of discipline matrices across US police departments was unknown, and very little was known about how they were structured or what comprised their content.