“The best predictor of future behavior is…”: examining the impact of past police misconduct on the likelihood of future misconduct

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have identified numerous correlates of police misconduct, but no study to date has examined the impact of prior misconduct on the likelihood of future misconduct. Using a population heterogeneity/state-dependence conceptual framework, this study explores the potential influence of low self-control and prior misconduct on future intentions to engage in misconduct among a multi-agency sample of 101 first-line police supervisors. Across three types of misconduct, the results demonstrate stronger support for the state-dependent effect of prior misconduct. Specific findings, policy implications, and directions for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Police misconduct
• population heterogeneity
• self-control
• state dependence

Acknowledgement

The author would like to express his appreciation to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this manuscript. This version has been considerably improved because of their efforts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The terms misconduct, deviance, and misbehavior are used interchangeably throughout this paper to indicate behaviors that violate the law, agency policy, and/or ethical codes of conduct.

2. The participants from the statewide training academy are supervisors who are employed by small, rural and suburban agencies within a single U.S. state, who all received their training at the same state academy.

3. Bivariate analyses tested whether the non-respondents differed from the respondents. These analyses indicated that no significant differences existed between the respondents and non-respondents.

4. As opposed to only asking about prior behavior, this methodology was chosen to potentially assuage the fear that some respondents might have about answering honestly to these acts of misconduct. If given the opportunity to state that they are not going to do it in the future, this may lessen their apprehension to report they have done it in the past.

5. Prior research examining police misconduct has generally used one of two measures: (1) internal and external (i.e., citizen) complaints and (2) indirect self-report estimates. Historically, police misconduct data has been difficult for researchers to obtain (e.g., Walker and Katz 2016). Moreover, complaints represent an official measurement strategy and such measures of misconduct suffer from the same validity issues as do official measures of crime, such as under- and over-reporting problems and the fact that only a small fraction of complaints are actually sustained (e.g., Chappell and Piquero 2004; Fridell and Pate 1997).

6. No significant differences were observed in the Nonwhite race categories among the study variables of interest as determined by chi-square and ANOVA analyses.

7. Agency 1 is located in the Western U.S. and Agency 2 is located in the Midwestern U.S. Agency 3, the statewide academy, serves officers/supervisors from small, rural and suburban agencies from a Southern U.S. state. The author is unable to provide specific information on the agencies or in what states they are located as doing so would violate confidentiality terms that were agreed upon when the data were collected.

8. Multicollinearity–statistical associations between the independent variables–can be an issue when estimating multiple regression models. According to Menard (1995), researchers should begin to become concerned when variance inflation factor (VIF) statistics are greater than 5.00. Across all nine models, the largest VIF statistic yielded was 1.79. Therefore, multicollinearity was not an issue within these analyses, and they even meet Allison’s (1999) stricter threshold of 2.50. Full results available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was performed under a subcontract to the University of South Florida from the University of Illinois at Chicago and made possible by grant number [2008-DN-BX-0005] from the National Institute of Justice. Contents are solely the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Justice.

Notes on contributors

Christopher M. Donner

Christopher M. Donner is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology at Loyola University Chicago, and he received his Ph.D. at the University of South Florida. His research focuses on American policing, particularly integrity and misconduct, officer behavior, and procedural justice. Dr Donner’s recent research has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals such as Police Quarterly and the Journal of Criminal Justice.