Conceptual framework for managing knowledge of police deviance

Abstract

This is a conceptual article on police deviance and its multi-faceted forms. It seeks to address the lack of an adequately formulated framework in the literature of the breadth and depth of police misconduct and corruption. The article argues for the use of a proposed ‘sliding scale’ of police deviance by examining the nature, extent and progression of police deviance and crime using research in Australia and Canada as illustrative case studies. This sliding scale is designed to research, capture and store, and hence extend the knowledge base of what constitutes police deviance at the level of the individual, the group and the organisational contexts of policing. As such, the conceptual framework is a robust yet flexible research tool and its utility as a sliding scale constitutes a step forward in advancing the knowledge on police deviance and criminality through adopting an integrated and holistic approach to managing such knowledge.

Keywords:

• police misconduct
• police corruption
• police deviance
• police crime
• police ethics
• police integrity
• police knowledge management

Notes

1. Extracted from respective Police 2005/2006 Annual Reports and Australian Bureau of Statistics.

2. The words ‘one would expect to find’ are indicative of a process of generating testable hypotheses based on the research evidence to date.

3. The interested reader is referred to some recent work by the first author in conjunction with other colleagues in regard to the use of a KMS in the financing of organised crime. See Gottschalk and Dean (2009).