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Testing the Theoretical Relationship Between the Role of the Society at Large and the Willingness to Adhere to the Police Code of Silence

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Abstract

This study examines the relationship between the role of the society at large and the code of silence in China and South Korea. Although both countries embrace Confucianism and have similar geographic, political, and cultural traditions, they have developed quite distinctly in recent years. The data for this study were collected from police officers attending in-service training at national training academies in both countries using the police integrity methodology. The respondents evaluated four scenarios describing examples of police corruption. Our multivariate models demonstrate that, once the police integrity measures and demographic characteristics are controlled for, the country has an independent effect on the respondents’ adherence to the code of silence in all four scenarios. These results suggest that, despite many commonalities in their cultural and political traditions, two countries create different integrity environments.

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Notes

  1. Washington State University (WSU)’s Office of Research Assurances (ORA) has found that the project is exempt from the need for IRB review, as it satisfies the criteria for Exempt Research at 45 CFR 46.101(b)(2). Certification of Exemption (IRB Number 14425) was issued by the WSU’s ORA.

  2. At the time when the data were collected, China had two national police universities, both of which were under the direct leadership of the Ministry of Public Security. These two universities provide in-service training programs to officers from police agencies across the country. In addition, each province in China also has their own police college which provides degree education (limited to undergraduate or associate degree) and in-service training programs to officers. But in terms of in-service training, these provincial level police colleges only accept police officers from their own province, rather than offering in-service training programs to police officers from all over China.

  3. For the surveys conducted in China and South Korea, we achieved high responses rates. These high response rates can be attributed to the survey administration method used in this study (i.e., paper-and-pencil survey). As Nix and colleagues (Nix et al., 2019) found face-to-face police officer surveys generally yield substantially high response rates than those conducted in other formats.

  4. Michigan State University’s Human Research Protection Program has approved the data collection protocol and the instrument used in an expedited process on March 11, 2009.

  5. The results here reaffirm that participants were generally willing to indicate their willingness to report misconduct. In fact, only a small number of officers from China (n = 5) and Korea (n = 8) rated their willingness to report all four types of misconduct as a 3 (i.e., the ostensible neutral category).

  6. Regarding respondents’ opinions about the disciplines associated with each scenario considered, because the discipline is country-dependent, the possible answers were not identical in both questionnaires. Specifically, possible answers in the Chinese questionnaire were 1 = “no discipline,” 2 = “verbal reprimand,” 3 = “written reprimand,” 4 = “period of suspension without pay,” 5 = “demotion in rank,” and 6 = “dismissal.” On the other hand, possible answers in the Korean questionnaire were: 1 = “no discipline,” 2 = “written warning,” 3 = “salary decrease by 50% for 1–3 months,” 4 = “suspension for 1–3 months,” and 5 = “dismissal”.

  7. Due to the culturally appropriate categories of education that differed between countries, we needed to collapse like educational categories together into a common metric applicable to both countries.

  8. There were very few cases with any missing data (n < 7) in both datasets. The missing cases were dropped with listwise deletion from the analyses. Out of an abundance of caution we imputed the dataset 50 times using Markov Chains using the mice package in R. The results remain consistent with those presented here to the third decimal place.

  9. This is calculated by dividing the odds ratios for China by Korea.

  10. These two variables could be categorized as organizational-level factors given that others’ willingness to report essentially reflects ethical climate within the agency, and the assessment of violation of official rule to a large extent reflects the police organization’s performance in educating their officers about rules and regulations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Utah, 380 S 1530 E Rm301, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112-0250, USA

    Guangzhen Wu

  2. Department of Criminal Justice, University of North Dakota, Columbia Hall Room 1101, 501 N Columbia Rd Stop 8050, Grand Forks, ND, 58202-8050, USA

    Jon Maskaly

  3. Korean National Police University, 100-50, Hwangsan-gil, Hwangsan-ri, Sinchang-myeon, Asan-si, Chungcheongnam-do, Republic of Korea

    Wook Kang

  4. Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Washington State University, Wilson-Short 117, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA

    David A. Makin

  5. School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, 506 Baker Hall, 655 Auditorium Rd., East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Sanja Kutnjak Ivković

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  1. Guangzhen Wu
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Correspondence to Guangzhen Wu.

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Wu, G., Maskaly, J., Kang, W. et al. Testing the Theoretical Relationship Between the Role of the Society at Large and the Willingness to Adhere to the Police Code of Silence. Asian J Criminol 17, 263–284 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-022-09363-w

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