RELEVANT
FOCUSED
READY

Police Integrity : The Unwillingness to Report a Peer’s Misconduct
Stephanie Blouin
Introduction

Discussion

This project explores the unwillingness to report a peer’s
misconduct. Throughout this study three factors playing a
role in the ineffectiveness of peer reporting have been
outlined. Although police organizations aim to increase
peer reporting of unethical behaviours, studies have shown
that police officers who report their peers damage the
overall team structure.(McCartney & Parent, 2015)

From this research, it was concluded that the acts that
were perceived as more serious were those with acquisitive
attributions. The theft of money or items of any value is an
act that most police officers would report.

Background
The public puts a lot of trust in the police and if the
officers engage in unethical behaviours it will damage the
police organization’s image and reduce public confidence
in them (Payam, 2016). Therefore police integrity plays an
important role in building public trust.One aspect of police
integrity is peer reporting of unethical police behaviours.
Peer reporting is best described as a police officer
reporting to the superior officer in the chain of command
about the misconduct committed by one of his co-workers.
According to Rowe (2018) the unwillingness of peer
reporting usually starts as soon as recruits are trained by
more experience police officers. The recruits are often
told by other police officers to forget what they learned in
the academy and to start learning real police work (Rowe,
2018).

As for individual peer reporting intentions the academic
literature stated that when police officers have higher
levels of cynicism it will decrease their peer reporting
intentions.The existing studies that were reviewed stated
that low level of cynicism increases the likelihood of peer
reporting within police departments.
The last factor identified was that of police cultures. The
police culture is one who encourages values such as loyalty
among police officers but also creates a “us versus them”
attitude (McCartney and Parent, 2015). Therefore,
reporting a peer is seen as “snitching” and is discouraged
by police culture.

Methods
The method used to complete this project was a critical
appraisal. A thorough literature review of the current
research was conducted, and the most relevant
information was chosen for review.The majority of the
articles for this research were found on the Justice
Institute of British Columbia library databases and the
following keywords were used to find relevant information:
Police Integrity, Peer Reporting of Police Misconduct,
Corruption, Police Culture, Police Ethics, Blue Code of
Silence, Police deviance. This search returned almost five
thousand results. To limit the results, the search criteria
was narrowed to only include full text, peer reviewed
articles from the year 2000 onwards. The search terms
generated hits in specific databases such as Criminal
Justice Abstracts, PsycINFO. In total nine articles were
analyzed for their relevance and validity in terms of this
research topic.

http://justiceisjustus.blogspot.ca/2013/07/the-blue-code-of-silence.html

Conclusions or Recommendations
Several conclusions and recommendations were made as a
result of this research. These recommendations include,
but are not limited to:
• Further ethical training for both new recruits and current
police officers.
• Reducing the amount of unethical behaviours and
maintaining an ethical environment will reduce the need
for peer reporting.

Results/Findings

• Rewarding ethical behaviours in order to support ethical
decision making.

Three main themes emerged from this research. The
themes identified are three different factors that play a
role in the unwillingness to report a peer’s misconduct.
The themes were:

The research shows that some factors will decrease peer
reporting intentions. Yet it is important to encourage peer
reporting because it is a preventive strategy to unethical
behaviours in a police organization.

• The perceived seriousness of acts;
• Individual Reporting Intentions;
• Police culture.
These themes were explored and compared to the
existing literature, and further discussion was undertaken.

References
McCartney, S., & Parent, R. (2015). Discretion, Supervision, and Leadership.
Ethics in law enforcement. Victoria, BC: BCcampus. Retrieved from
http://opentextbc.ca/ethicsinlawenforcement/
Payam, M. M. (2016). Police Officers' and Candidates' Views on Professionally
Unethical Behaviors: The Elazığ and Malatya Case. Turkish Journal Of
Business Ethics, 9(1), 20-24. doi:10.12711/behavior.2016.9.0002
Rowe, M. (2018). Introduction to Policing. Sage Publications. Retrieved from
https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/introduction-to-policing/book25011
4

Bachelor of Law Enforcement Studies Justice Institute of British Columbia, March 2018