Organizational justice and police misconduct

Citation

(2012), "Organizational justice and police misconduct", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 35 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/pijpsm.2012.18135daa.004

Organizational justice and police misconduct

Article Type: Perspectives on policing From: Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Volume 35, Issue 4.

Scott Wolfe and Alex PiqueroCriminal Justice & Behavior2011Vol. 38Issue 4pp. 332-353

In this study, the authors examined the role of organizational justice in predicting police misconduct among a sample of Philadelphia police officers. Prior research has demonstrated several individual (e.g. age), organizational (e.g. police socialization), and theoretical (e.g. strain) correlates of police misconduct, but this study adds to the literature but analyzing the potential effect of how an officer views the fairness of his/her department. Theoretically, police officers who view their organization as one that engages in unfair managing procedures, unjust distribution of resources, or disrespectful interpersonal treatment may be more inclined to violate agency norms and regulations by committing acts of misconduct. In this study, the authors examine the role of organizational justice in explaining adherence to the code-of-silence and beliefs in noble cause corruption. They hypothesize that officers who perceive their organization to be more just and fair will have weaker adherence to the code-of-silence and be less likely to believe that corruption of the noble cause is justified. They further hypothesize that officers perceiving their agency to engage in fair practices are expected to engage in less misconduct.

The study used a simple random sample of 499 Philadelphia police officers. The misconduct dependent variables are simple counts of how many times they had been the subject to a formal citizen complaint, investigated by the department's internal affairs division, or charged with a violation of the department's disciplinary code. A three-item code-of-silence scale (e.g. “Unless it is an extremely serious matter, officers should protect each other when misconduct is alleged”) was constructed to measure belief in the code, and an eight-item noble cause scale (e.g. “Sometimes, an officer has to use methods prohibited by directives to enforce the law or make an arrest”) was constructed to measure belief in noble cause corruption. Finally, a six-item organizational justice scale was created to capture the three aspects of organizational justice: distributive (e.g. “Disciplinary action is a result of pressure on supervisors from command staff to give out discipline”), procedural (e.g. “The rules and regulations dealing with officer conduct are fair and sensible”), and interactional (e.g. “Police supervisors are very interested in their subordinates”).

Using OLS regression, the authors found that organizational justice is negatively related to code-of-silence attitudes and noble cause beliefs. Specifically, a 1 standard deviation increase in perceived organizational justice was associated with a 0.120 standard deviation decrease in code-of-silence attitudes, and one standard deviation increase in organizational justice was related to a 0.198 standard deviation decrease in noble cause beliefs. Multinomial logistic regression results also confirm that officers who perceived their agency to be organizationally just and fair were less likely to have citizen complaints filed against them, be the subject of an internal affairs investigation, and be disciplined by the department.

Based on these results, the authors urge police administrators to develop agency policies that are procedurally fair, communicate with subordinate officers about specific policies and their intended purpose, and allow officers to voice concerns about such policies. This suggestion applies to policies concerning everything from department rules and disciplinary processes to hiring and promoting procedures. Implementing these strategies should cause officers to view the agency in a better light and should make police agencies more successful organizations.