Keywords

Introduction

Empirical work in this book is grounded in the police integrity theory and the related methodology (Klockars & Kutnjak Ivković, 2004; Klockars et al., 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006). Since Klockars and colleagues (Klockars & Kutnjak Ivković, 2004; Klockars et al., 2000, 2004, 2006) proposed the theory of police integrity and designed an empirical way to measure integrity, many scholars across the world have relied on it to assess the level of police integrity in their national or local police agencies (Alain, 2004; Cheloukhine et al., 2015; Edelbacher & Kutnjak Ivković, 2004; Datzer et al., 2019; Haberfeld, 2004; Khechumyan & Kutnjak Ivković, 2015; Kutnjak Ivković et al., 2016a, Kutnjak Ivković & Khechumyan, 2014; Kutnjak Ivković & Shelley, 2005, 2008; Lobnikar & Meško, 2015; Peacock et al., 2020; Porter et al., 2015; Pounti et al., 2004; Punch et al., 2004; Sauerman & Kutnjak Ivković, 2015; Torstensson Levander & Ekenvall, 2004; Vallmüür, 2015, 2019; Van Droogenbroeck et al., 2019; Westmarland, 2004, 2006; Wu & Makin, 2019).

Although the key pillars of discipline fairness measurement have been incorporated in the early traditional police integrity approach (Klockars et al., 1997), it was the first extension of the work by Klockars and Kutnjak Ivković (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998) in which the topic of disciplinary fairness was included in the police integrity discussions. In particular, Klockars and Kutnjak Ivković (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998) hypothesized what the potential influence of the evaluations of disciplinary fairness should be on the police officers’ willingness to report misconduct. Starting from the early writings by Klockars and colleagues (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998; Klockars et al., 2000), the issue of disciplinary fairness has been included in police integrity research, albeit not to the same extent as more traditional measures of police integrity. A handful of subsequent studies that utilized this approach provided mixed results (e.g., Datzer et al., 2019, Kutnjak Ivković et al., 2016b; Kutnjak Ivković & Sauerman, 2013; Kutnjak Ivković & Shelley, 2005, 2007, 2010).

This chapter relies on the police integrity theory and the accompanying methodology to assess the relationship between the code of silence and the perceptions of discipline fairness. Following the approach developed by Klockars and Kutnjak Ivković (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998), we empirically test the nature of the relationship along three proposed theoretical models. In the process, we also study this relationship not only across different forms of police misconduct, but also across different levels of misconduct severity within each form of misconduct. In the subsequent multivariate analyses, we test the effect of the perceptions of disciplinary fairness and traditional police integrity correlates on the police officers’ adherence to the code of silence. In particular, while controlling for the influence of organizational factors (e.g., evaluations of misconduct seriousness, severity of expected discipline, familiarity with official rules, expectations of fellow police officers’ estimated willingness to report misconduct), we assess the importance of the respondents’ evaluations of disciplinary fairness for their reluctance to report misconduct.

Discipline Fairness and Police Integrity

Although the theory of police integrity (Klockars & Kutnjak Ivković, 2004; Klockars et al., 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006) does not directly link discipline fairness and police integrity (e.g., Klockars et al., 1997), a framework has been established for the exploration of the relationship between the respondents’ expressed willingness to report and the perceptions of organizational distributive discipline fairness (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998).

Theoretical Approaches

Klockars and Kutnjak Ivković (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998) argued that the police officers’ evaluations of discipline their police agency will mete out for a specific violation of the official rules should be related to their willingness to report misconduct. To test this relationship, they proposed three models in which the perceptions of disciplinary fairness could be related to the respondents’ willingness to report misconduct (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998; Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1
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Hypothetical effect of discipline fairness on willingness to report under three theoretical models

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The first model—simplified deterrence—assumes that discipline harshness is the primary reason why police officers would be willing to report misconduct. It implies that the harsher the discipline, the more likely police officers are to report misconduct. Hence, the proportion of police officers willing to report misconduct would be the highest for the police officers who evaluated the expected discipline as too harsh and would be the lowest for the police officers who evaluated the expected discipline as too lenient. It is a simplified model because it takes into account only discipline severity but omits both its celerity and certainty (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998).

The second model—discipline indifferent—simply assumes that there is no relationship between the police officers’ willingness to report and their evaluations of discipline fairness. Hence, the proportion of police officers adhering to the code of silence is the same, regardless of how fair they evaluated the expected discipline to be. Kutnjak Ivković and Klockars (1998) offered reasons that may explain this relationship. To begin with, although police officers may think that the discipline is harsh, this evaluation would have no effect on their willingness to report because they believe that the certainty of receiving any discipline from their police agency is rather low. Alternatively, the code may be so strong that any potential effects of discipline harshness would be lost on it.

The third model—simple justice—assumes that the police officers’ primary motivation for reporting misconduct lies in the fact that they want to see misconduct disciplined justly or fairly (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998). Hence, the percent of police officers willing to report misconduct would be higher among those evaluating the discipline as fair than among those who are evaluating the discipline as too harsh. However, the prediction for the right side of the graph is less clear; Kutnjak Ivković and Klockars (1998, p. 335) argue that, “[t]he motive of simple justice would offer no reason for increased reporting of misconduct under conditions of excessive leniency.” It is quite possible that the relation could remain flat or become negative when discipline is evaluated as too lenient.

Empirical Measurement of Discipline Fairness

The empirical measures of discipline fairness are based on the second dimension of the theory of police integrity, which focuses on the police agency’s control efforts and their influence on the level of police integrity in the police agency. Klockars and Kutnjak Ivković (2004) developed two questions tapping into this theoretical dimension. First, they asked the respondents to state what they think that the appropriate discipline is for the examples of misconduct described in the questionnaire. Second, they asked the respondents to predict what discipline their police agency would mete out for a police officer who engaged in such misconduct. Subtracting the expected discipline from the appropriate discipline determines how fair the respondent is evaluating the severity of the expected discipline. If the difference is zero, the respondent is evaluating the expected discipline as fair. On the one hand, if the difference is negative, the respondent evaluates the expected discipline as too harsh. Finally, if the difference is positive, the respondent evaluates the expected discipline as too lenient.

The difference between the answers to the questions about the appropriate and the expected discipline can range from −4 to +4 (Fig. 3.1). However, Kutnjak Ivković and Klockars (1998) pointed out that these are ordinal scales. Accordingly, instead of comparing the respondents’ willingness to report for each numeric value, they condensed the respondents into three categories: (1) the respondents who evaluated the discipline as too harsh (values −4 to −1), (2) the respondents who evaluated the discipline as fair (value 0), and (3) the respondents who evaluated the discipline as too lenient (values +1 to +4). The studies that tested the relationship between the code of silence and perceptions of disciplinary fairness typically followed this classification.

Studying the Relationship Between the Code of Silence and Perceptions of Disciplinary Fairness

In their original paper, Kutnjak Ivković and Klockars (1998) reported that, compared to the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as too harsh, the respondents who evaluated it as fair were much more willing to say that they would report misconduct. Hence, they found consistent evidence supporting the simple justice model. On the other hand, a comparison between the respondents who perceived the expected discipline as fair and those who evaluated it as too lenient yielded small differences, suggesting in most of the scenarios at best a modest and positive relationship between willingness to report and perceptions of fairness, a finding indicative of the simple justice model as well.

Several subsequent studies tested the model and reported mixed results. When they focused on the left side of the graph (comparing the expressed willingness to report by the respondents who perceived the expected discipline as too harsh with those who evaluated the expected discipline as fair), some of the studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina (Datzer et al., 2019), the Czech Republic (Kutnjak Ivković & Shelley, 2007, 2010), and the United States (Kutnjak Ivković et al., 2016b) provided support for the simple justice model. On the other hand, studies from South Africa (Kutnjak Ivković & Sauerman, 2013) and older studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina (Kutnjak Ivković & Shelley, 2005) provided evidence supporting the discipline indifferent model. In both countries, the code of silence was very strong at the time of the study, and it seems that perceptions of the expected discipline harshness at the time would have had no significant effect on the police officers’ willingness to report.

When these police integrity studies focused on the right side of the graph (comparing the expressed willingness to report by the respondents who perceived the expected discipline as fair with those who evaluated the expected discipline as too lenient), the results were more uniform. Although occasionally some scenarios seem to fit the simple justice model or the simple deterrence model, in the overwhelming majority of the scenarios the model of discipline indifference works best (Datzer et al., 2019; Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998; Kutnjak Ivković et al., 2016b; Kutnjak Ivković & Sauerman, 2013; Kutnjak Ivković & Shelley, 2005, 2007, 2010). In other words, the percentage of the respondents willing to report misconduct does not depend on whether they evaluated the discipline as fair or too lenient. It seems that, on this side of the graph, discipline harshness does not matter as much as does its certainty.

This Chapter

This chapter expands the traditional police integrity approach toward the study of the code of silence by adding the measures of discipline fairness into the models. Extant research exploring the relationship between the respondents’ willingness to report misconduct and their perceptions of disciplinary fairness has yielded mixed results. If perceptions of disciplinary fairness were found to be related to the code of silence, the relationship mostly appears to fit the simple justice model because police officers who evaluated the expected discipline as too harsh seem to be less likely to say that they would report than the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as fair. On the other hand, if police officers perceived the expected discipline as too lenient, they seem to be as likely to say that they would report as police officers who evaluated the expected discipline as fair, thus typically fitting the no relationship, discipline indifferent model. This chapter utilizes the same approach in the study of the relationship between the code of silence and perceptions of disciplinary fairness. It expands the existing literature by exploring this relationship not only for the traditional police corruption and the use of excessive force scenarios, but also for the organizational deviance and interpersonal deviance scenarios. We first explore the nature of the bivariate relationship and then engage in multivariate models, in which this relationship is explored while controlling for the traditional police integrity measures.

Methodology

Sample

In 2018/2019, we have surveyed police officers from a medium-size municipal police agency in the United States. Our sample of 148 police officers comes from a municipal police agency that serves an urban community. For a detailed description of the characteristics of our sample and police agency, please see Chaps. 1 and 2.

Measures

The analyses in this chapter assess the effect of the respondents’ perceptions of disciplinary fairness on their willingness to adhere to the code of silence. All measures are included in the new version of the police integrity questionnaire (Kutnjak Ivković et al., 2019) that includes scenarios dealing with police corruption, use of excessive force, organizational deviance, and interpersonal deviance. After they read the description of misconduct in each of the scenarios, the respondents answered seven questions. These questions asked them to evaluate examples of police misconduct and state how serious they evaluate the misconduct, whether they perceive that it violates official rules, what they think that the appropriate discipline should be, what discipline they think that their police agency would mete out, and how willing they would be to report the misconduct. For details, please see Chaps. 1 and 2.

Dependent Variable

Our measure of the respondents’ adherence to the code of silence, based on their own willingness to report misconduct, is asking the respondents to assess whether they would be willing to report misconduct described in the scenario. The respondents could have selected an answer from a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 = “definitely would not report” to 5 = “definitely would report.” The responses were ultimately collapsed into two categories, with values of 1 and 2 recoded as 1 (i.e., adhere to the code of silence) and values of 3 through 5 recoded as 0. There are two exceptions to this rule. In particular, for the most severe scenarios depicting corruption (theft from a burglary scene) and excessive force (shooting a suspect in the back), we recoded 1 through 3 as 1 (i.e., adhering to the code of silence) and 4 and 5 as 0. For details, please see Chap. 2.

Organizational Independent Variables

We have included several organizational variables in our models. They include measures of the respondents’ own evaluations of misconduct seriousness, their estimates of whether the misconduct described in the scenario violates official rules, their estimates of appropriate and expected discipline, and their estimates of most police officers’ willingness to report. For a more detailed description, please see Chap. 2.

Disciplinary Fairness Independent Variables

The discipline fairness measure was obtained by deducting the respondents’ answers to the question about the expected discipline from their answer to the question about the appropriate discipline. There are six possible answers to the questions about expected and appropriate discipline (1 = “none” [no discipline], 2 = “verbal reprimand,” 3 = “written reprimand,” 4 = “period of suspension,” 5 = “demotion in rank,” 6 = “dismissal”). Because there are six disciplinary options, the values of the variable measuring disciplinary fairness could range from −5 to +5. The value of 0 indicates that the respondents evaluated the expected discipline as fair (i.e., they selected the same disciplinary option as both the appropriate discipline and the expected discipline). Because we were interested in determining whether the discipline was seen as fair, too harsh, or too lenient, we recoded the values −5 to −1 as “discipline too harsh” and values 1 to 5 as “discipline too lenient.” Thus, we created two indicator variables, “too harsh discipline” and “too lenient discipline,” that were compared against those who thought the expected discipline was fair.

For all scenarios, between 58% (falsely calling in sick) and 85% (shooting suspect in the back) of the respondents evaluated the expected discipline as fair. Most officers who were identified as evaluating the discipline as either too harsh or too lenient were typically within two points from zero. In other words, very few officers felt as though there were going to be vast differences between the discipline one should receive and the discipline one would likely receive.

Individual Independent Variables

Several variables measured the respondents’ demographic characteristics. They include the respondents’ length of service, gender, assignment, supervisory status, and education. Because of the small sample size, we used these demographic characteristics as the control variables in our multivariate models. Please see Chap. 2 for details.

Analytic Strategy

The analytic strategy for this chapter proceeds in two phases. In the first phase, we examine the willingness to report misconduct based on the disciplinary fairness expected by the respondents. Note that we intentionally report willingness to report, capturing the logical complement of the code of silence, to facilitate integrating the results with prior literature. The second stage of the analyses incorporates the measures of disciplinary fairness into our multivariate models that explain adherence to the code of silence, net of other police integrity variables. Again, we group the results together by scenario type for ease of interpretation. We continue to use the LASSO models to generate the parameter estimates. For a more detailed description of this method, please see Chap. 2.

Results

The Effects of Discipline Fairness on the Code of Silence

We follow the analytical approach developed by Klockars and Kutnjak Ivković (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998). Thus, we first focus on the relationship between the respondents’ willingness to report and their perceptions of disciplinary fairness. These results are shown in Fig. 3.2 for corruption scenarios, Fig. 3.3 for excessive use of force scenarios, Fig. 3.4 for organizational deviance scenarios, and Fig. 3.5 for interpersonal deviance scenarios.

Fig. 3.2
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Willingness to report based on perceptions of disciplinary fairness for corruption scenarios

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Fig. 3.3
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Willingness to report based on perceptions of disciplinary fairness for excessive use of force scenarios

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Fig. 3.4
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Willingness to report based on perceptions of disciplinary fairness for organizational deviance scenarios

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Fig. 3.5
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Willingness to report based on perceptions of disciplinary fairness for interpersonal deviance scenarios

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Starting with the police corruption scenarios (Fig. 3.2), two of the three scenarios follow the simple justice model (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998). Specifically, police officers are significantly more willing to say that they would report theft from a crime scene and supervisory corruption when the expected discipline is evaluated as fair than when the expected discipline is evaluated as too harsh.

However, when the discipline is thought to be too lenient compared to fair, police officers appear less willing to report in these two scenarios, although the effect is not statistically significant. Furthermore, there are indications of discipline indifference for the scenario of accepting free gifts between too harsh and fair discipline. This is supported by the fact that police officers are most likely to report when they feel the discipline will be too lenient, suggesting that officers may not find this scenario particularly serious and thus are generally unwilling to report this misconduct if they perceive that there would be serious consequences.

Similarly, Fig. 3.3 also contains the relationship for the use of excessive force scenarios. In two of the three scenarios, officers’ willingness to report follows the pattern predicted by the simple justice model—police officers who evaluated the expected discipline as fair were more likely to say they would report than officers who evaluated the expected discipline as too harsh. The only scenario in regard to which we do not see a significant increase in the willingness to report is the scenario depicting the shooting of an unarmed suspect. In this scenario, the overwhelming majority of police officers in our sample, regardless of whether they perceived the expected discipline as too harsh or fair, said that they would report such misconduct.

There is relatively little change between the willingness to report for those who expected a fair discipline and those who felt that the discipline would be too lenient for the scenarios depicting verbal abuse of a citizen and a supervisor who failed to stop a beating. On the other hand, perceptions of lenient discipline decrease the likelihood that an officer would be willing to report the shooting of an unarmed suspect.

Figure 3.4 depicts the same willingness to report by perceptions of disciplinary fairness for organizational deviance . A comparison of the police officers’ willingness to report for the three scenarios depicting organizational deviance (covering up DUI crash, false sick report, false overtime reporting) shows that the simple justice model fits all of these scenarios well, with the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as fair being more likely to say that they would report than the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as too harsh.

The other side of the graph—comparing the expressed willingness to report by the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as fair with those who evaluated it as too lenient—yielded more diversity in their views. In two scenarios (covering up DUI crash, false sick report), the percentages were similar across these two groups, with the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as too lenient being somewhat more likely to say that they would report than the respondents who perceived the expected discipline as fair. Finally, the simplified deterrence model fit best the findings for the scenario describing false overtime reporting. In particular, the respondents who perceived that the expected discipline is fair were more likely to say that they would report than the respondents who perceived the expected discipline as too lenient were.

We have also compared the views of the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as too harsh with those who evaluated the expected discipline as fair for interpersonal deviance scenarios (Fig. 3.5). The results show the effect for the simple justice model for all three of these scenarios, although the effect is not significant for the scenarios of yelling at coworkers and spreading false rumors about a coworker.

Focus on the comparison between the views expressed by the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as fair the views expressed by those who evaluated the expected discipline as too lenient reveals that in two scenarios—telling sexist jokes and yelling at coworkers—the percentage of officers willing to report is greater for those who feel that the expected discipline is too lenient than for those who evaluate the expected discipline as fair.

The Effects of Discipline Fairness and Police Integrity Measures on the Code of Silence

Next, we present the results from the multivariate models estimating the effect of adhering to the code of silence after considering the perceptions of disciplinary fairness. These results are building on the traditional police integrity variables. Accordingly, all estimates are net of the traditional police integrity variables presented and described in Chap. 2. We present the results for each of the scenario types below. We specifically comment on how the results compare to those presented in Chap. 2 (i.e., the unconditional police integrity estimates).

Police Corruption

We start by looking at the results from the disciplinary fairness variables on the corruption scenarios. These results are presented in Table 3.1. Expecting lenient discipline, compared to expecting fair discipline, decreases adherence to the code of silence for the scenario depicting accepting free gifts (OR = 0.35, p < 0.001) and the scenario depicting supervisory corruption (OR = 0.13, p < 0.001). Additionally, expecting harsh discipline, compared to expecting fair discipline, is associated with an increase in the adherence to the code of silence (OR = 3.82, p < 0.001) in the scenario depicting theft from a burglary scene. No other significant effects are noted for the disciplinary fairness variables in scenarios with police corruption.

Table 3.1 Disciplinary fairness and police integrity variables predicting code of silence
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Next, we look at how the results from these revised models affected the parameter estimates from the unconditional models (i.e., those with only the police integrity variables). Overall, we see that the results remain substantively unchanged for the effects of others’ adherence to the code of silence, violation of policy, and perceptions of seriousness for all three scenarios. These findings suggest that the inclusion of these additional variables does not affect the variance explained by these three traditional police integrity variables. At the same time, we see that the effects of the type of expected discipline for engaging in these acts are substantively similar, although slightly augmented, from the unconditional models for the accepting free gifts and supervisory corruption scenarios. Likewise, the substantive conclusion for the type of expected discipline is consistent for theft from a burglary scene, although the effect is attenuated by 25.38% from the unconditional model. This would suggest a large portion of the variance of the type of expected discipline is associated with how fair that discipline is thought to be.

Use of Excessive Force

Next, we turn to the results for the scenarios depicting the use of excessive force. These results are also presented in Table 3.1. Expecting a lenient discipline, compared to expecting a fair discipline, reduces the likelihood that an officer will adhere to the code of silence net of other factors in the scenario of shooting an unarmed person in the back (OR = 0.04, p < 0.001). The same effect is not present for the other two scenarios in this category. Instead, perceptions of harsh discipline, relative to fair discipline, increase adherence to the code of silence for the scenarios involving verbal abuse of a citizen (OR = 41.16, p < 0.001) and failing to report a beating (OR = 4.14, p < 0.001).

Now we compare the results for the traditional police integrity variables from these updated models to the unconditional models presented in Chap. 2. Again, we see that, substantively, the results remain the same for others’ adherence to the code of silence, although the magnitude of the effect is attenuated by 84.43% for the scenario depicting the shooting a suspect in the back, 39.71% for verbally abusing a citizen, and 72.66% for failing to report a beating. The effects for violation of policy and perceptions of seriousness remain substantively unchanged and similar in magnitude to those from the unconditional model. Additionally, the effects for the type of discipline expected remain unchanged with the addition of the new variables, although it attenuated some of the effects from the unconditional models. Also, the addition of the discipline fairness variables now yields a significant effect for dismissal (compared to intermediary discipline) in the scenario depicting shooting a suspect in the back (OR = 0.33, p < 0.05).

Overall, these results suggest that the inclusion of the disciplinary fairness variables into the model explains some of the variance associated with traditional police integrity variables. Furthermore, the results indicate that officers’ willingness to report—or not, as is the case here—is associated with the type of discipline that will be meted out and how fair the officer evaluates that discipline to be. Finally, these results suggest that, while disciplinary fairness and type of discipline are somewhat related, they exert independent effects on an officer’s willingness to report.

Organizational Deviance

We now examine the results of the models for the scenarios depicting organizational deviance, presented in Table 3.1. Here, the only scenario in which disciplinary fairness exerts an effect is the scenario depicting a false sick report. In this scenario, lenient discipline, compared to fair discipline, reduces adherence to the code of silence (OR = 0.10, p < 0.001); and harsh discipline, relative to fair discipline, increases adherence to the code of silence (OR = 4.16, p < 0.001). The direction of the effects is consistent for the other two scenarios, although the effects are not statistically significant.

Turning to the changes in the traditional police integrity variables from Chap. 2, we see that the effect of others’ adherence to the code of silence is reduced by 40.9% for the scenario depicting a false sick report; however, the effect of this variable is slightly augmented for the other two scenarios. The assessment of whether an act is a violation of policy and the effect of own perceptions of seriousness are substantively unchanged in these three scenarios with the inclusion of the new variables. Finally, the effects for the type of expected discipline remain unchanged for the covering up of the DUI crash and the false overtime reporting scenarios. However, the effect of no discipline, compared to intermediary discipline, is 203% stronger (OR = 83.81, p < 0.001) for the false sick report after including the perception of disciplinary fairness variables. Similarly, the effect of dismissal relative to intermediary discipline is augmented by 36% (OR = 0.16, p < 0.001) from the unconditional model.

Interpersonal Deviance

Finally, we examine the results of the models for the scenarios depicting interpersonal deviance, also presented in Table 3.1. Here, there is a more consistent pattern of results for two of the three scenarios. Specifically, for the scenarios depicting telling sexist jokes (OR = 0.27, p < 0.001) and yelling at coworkers (OR = 0.08, p < 0.001), the effect of lenient discipline compared to fair discipline reduces adherence to the code of silence. Likewise, harsh discipline, relative to fair discipline, increases adherence to the code of silence for both the sexist joke (OR = 2.80, p < 0.001) and the yelling at coworkers (OR = 20.86, p < 0.001) scenarios. However, there is no effect for either variable in the scenario depicting spreading false rumors about coworkers.

Lastly, we compare the results of the traditional police integrity variables on the adherence to the code of silence after the inclusion of these two new variables. The results here suggest that the effects for others’ perceived adherence to the code of silence, violation of policy, and the police officer’s own perceptions of seriousness remain substantively unchanged. However, the effect of others’ perceived adherence to the code of silence has been augmented by 84.63% with the inclusion of the disciplinary fairness variables. Similarly, many of the effects of the discipline type have been augmented with the inclusion of disciplinary fairness. Again, this would suggest that, while these two may be related, they are exerting independent effects on adherence to the code of silence for the interpersonal deviance scenarios.

Conclusion

We follow the theoretical approach outlined by Klockars and Kutnjak Ivković (Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998) to assess the relationship between the expressed willingness to report misconduct and perceptions of disciplinary fairness. This approach allowed us to examine the bivariate effect of the police officers’ evaluations of expected discipline as too harsh or too lenient on their own expressed willingness to report.

Our comparison of the expressed willingness to report misconduct between the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as fair and the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as too harsh readily yielded the “big picture.” In the majority of the scenarios (9 out of 12 in bivariate models and 6 out of 12 in multivariate models), the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as too harsh were less likely to say that they would report the misconduct than were the respondents who evaluated the expected discipline as fair. Put differently, our results constitute substantial evidence of the simple justice model at work, both in general and across different forms of police misconduct. Our findings fit well with the results of several earlier studies (e.g., Datzer et al., 2019; Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998; Kutnjak Ivković et al., 2016b; Kutnjak Ivković & Shelley, 2007; 2010).

At the same time, we found no evidence of the simple deterrence model—assuming that harsher discipline would lead to more reporting—that would justify the use of harsh measures just to get police officers to report on the misconduct of their fellow officers. In fact, our findings provide ample evidence for police administrators that increasing the harshness of discipline—without teaching the police officers why this would be appropriate and securing their support for such measures—would be counterproductive and would backfire in the long run.

Our results also show that, in the majority of the scenarios (8 out of 12 for bivariate models and 6 out of 12 for multivariate models), whether the expected discipline is evaluated as fair or viewed as too lenient makes little difference for the police officers’ expressed willingness to report misconduct, thus fitting the discipline indifference model. Such results should not be surprising because most of the extant research findings seem consistent with the model of discipline indifference (Datzer et al., 2019; Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998; Kutnjak Ivković et al., 2016b; Kutnjak Ivković & Sauerman, 2013; Kutnjak Ivković & Shelley, 2005; 2007, 2010).

The story of disciplinary fairness and its relationship with the code of silence is but one aspect of how police officers may feel about the way their organizations are treating them. In terms of the outcomes, distributive justice could include not only fair discipline, but also fair assignment allocation, promotion, and shift work. In addition to the outcomes themselves, police officers’ willingness to stick to the code of silence could be linked with how they perceive that they are treated by their immediate supervisors. In the next chapter, we tackle the issue of organizational justice and its effects on the police officers’ reporting decisions.