A Typology of Police Corruption (Essay Sample)

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A typology of Police Corruption
Police corruption is a critical concern among most Americans, and it is defined as any criminal, unethical, improper, dishonest or deviant behavior perpetrated by police officers (Roebuck and Thomas, 423). However, the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable police behavior becomes blurred due to the ambiguity of the role of police officers in the American society. Interest groups, policymakers, citizens, and scholars have different perceptions about police corruption. The challenge of understanding police corruption is compounded further by the insufficient literature concerning the topic since most of the information available are from unreliable sources such as exposed police officers and muckraking journalists. Police corruption becomes well understood with improved definition, ordering, and articulation of the problem Studies on the issue of police corruption should first differentiate unacceptable police behaviors into uniform patterns. The second activity is to formulate dimensions to use in analyzing the unacceptable behaviors. The two steps are crucial to understanding police corruption and formulating explanatory theories.
The second part of the article challenges involved in defining police corruption and other concepts related to the issue. Authors such as Reiss and Bordua note some of the ambiguous police practices that complicate the definition of police corruption (Roebuck and Thomas, 424). One of the challenges in defining police corruption is the formalization of informal practices in various police departments. The formalization results in a wide variation in operating norms in various police organizations. Consequently, any definition of police corruption must highlight the variations in understanding police organizational norms. The critical components in the analysis of police corruption include the formal customs, informal norms, and different social rules or meanings related to the working environment of police officers. Nevertheless, the commonly accepted definition of police corruption is any forbidden activity in which a police officer engages in with the expectation of an illegal gain or reward. Activities of corrupt police officers transgress various norms and laws such as the formal norms, informal norms, and criminal laws. The norms and laws vary in application, and transgression of one may not constitute a violation of the other.
Consequently, police corruption becomes a clearer concept when considered as organizational deviance rather than a single transgression of any law or norm. Organizational Deviance is the participation in activities that contravene normative expectations or operating procedures in organizations. Police corruption as an organizational deviance arises from four major issues. The first is divergence in the goal of different organizations within the United States legal system. For instance, the relationship between the judiciary and the police makes it difficult for courts to control the police due to the informal practices within police departments. This allows police officers to engage in practices such as paying informers or reducing charges against suspects to ensure they are convicted. Such practices constitute organizational deviance. The second issue that results in police deviance is the fact that police departments rarely expose officers who engage in corruption because this results in a bad image for the whole police department. Thirdly, some police organizations punish police officers who engage in deviant behavior lightly, and this encourages police corruption. Finally, the police organization inheres secrecy and condones certain deviant police practices. Police officers are sometimes asked to lie about unacceptable activities to protect their colleagues from malpractice cases (Roebuck and Thomas, 427).
Despite its ambiguity, police corruption can be analyzed according to certain dimensions such as individuals involved, norms transgressed, support from colleagues, nature of organizational deviance, and reaction of police departments. Individuals involved in the corruption include the corrupted police officer and the corruptor. On the other hand, the norms transgressed include the legal norms, formal department norms, or both. The supports corrupt police officers receive from their colleagues vary based on several factors such as identities of the corruptors and violators, the corrupt act, situational context of the corruption, and the group norms. Organizational support of corruption does not demonstrate that police departments accept the corrupt police practices, although complete eradication of all incidences of police corruption is impossible. The level of organizational deviance influences the type of corruption that occurs. For instance, adventitious corruption occurs opportunistically and is disorganized. On the other hand, corruption that arises as police protect illegal activities is usually organized (Roebuck and Thomas, 428). Finally, the reaction of police departments depends on factors such as the identities of the individuals involved in the corruption, the type of corruption, and public exposé of the corruption among others.
Finally, the study on the police corruption typology classifies police corruption into eight groups. The first is the corruption of authority where an officer uses his status as a police officer to receive une...