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ABSTRACT
To date, punitive attitudes of police officers have received only little attention in criminological research. The present study addresses this lack of research by investigating punitivity in German police officers. Focus is placed on violent victimisation, which has been commonly considered to be a main cause of punitive attitudes. Furthermore, this study examined whether police officers’ professional self-esteem is related to punitivity and serves as a protective factor that buffers the negative effect of violent victimisation on punitivity. Ordinary least square regression analyses based on a sample of 15,733 German police officers support a relationship between victimisation experiences and punitivity. Police officers who had been violently attacked within the last year reported higher levels of punitivity than non-victims. Moreover, respondents with repeated victimisation experiences were the most punitive. While higher levels of professional self-esteem were indeed associated with less punitivity, the suggested protective influence of police officers’ professional self-esteem could not be confirmed. By contrast, higher levels of self-esteem instead increased the negative effects of victimisation experiences on punitivity.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 With respect to police officers, for example, in patrol forces, younger and occasionally male police officers reported victimisation experiences more often (Ellrich et al. Citation2012, Jager et al. Citation2013). Much more relevant are, however, situation and offender related variables. Here, studies showed higher victimisation rates of police officers in disorganised areas (e.g. characterised by economic problems, or violent propensity), when responding to (domestic) disturbance calls, or during confrontations with suspects impaired by drugs or alcohol (Covington et al. Citation2014, Fridell et al. Citation2009, Johnson Citation2011, Kaminski et al. Citation2003, Rabe-Hamp and Schuck Citation2007).
2 Kury and Ferdinand (Citation1998) and Reuband (Citation2008) already discussed some of the aforementioned measurement problems of victimisation, also in respect to the unexpectedly weak relationship between victimisation experiences and fear of crime.
3 The category ‘others’ consists of criminal detectives predominately (41.2%), 20.5% worked in special units and the remaining respondents had different duties.
4 Due to missing values, one quarter of the total sample cannot be considered in the following analyses. In most of these cases, missing values are given for all or nearly all variables of interest. It was decided not to impute missing values as this means an imputation of more or less complete cases. To put it another way, imputation of missing values would refer to cases for which no or at least only small empirical information is available. Moreover, the high rate of cases with (nearly) complete missing values is the result of a breaking-off of the survey, for example, caused by sudden police call. It is not to be expected that participants breaking-off will differ from those who completed the entire questionnaire. Thus, exclusion of cases with missing values may not be problematic. Additionally, this article is interested in correlative analyses, and does not claim to calculate exact estimates of the conditions given in the basic population. Using subsample for answering the current research questions is thus suitable.
5 Students leaving school at the end of the 10th grade receive the certificate ‘Realschulabschluss’, while students completing school at the end of the 12th or 13th grade receive the school-leaving certificate ‘Abitur’, which allows them to enter into higher education.
6 Additional correlation analyses between the ‘scapegoat of failed policies’ and victimisation was Pearson r = .09 and between ‘garbage men of a sick society’ and victimisation Pearson r = .11.
7 For the multivariate analyses the number of missing cases for the categorical variables police rank and work region was included by defining a set of dummy variables for each variable, with the last dummy variable representing the missing cases. As in none of the models did missing cases dummy variables have a significant effect on punitivity, findings are not shown.