Keywords

Introduction

Like any other organizations, police agencies have significant effects on work behaviors, perceptions, attitudes, emotions, and orientations of their employees. Police officers are subject to decisions made by their supervisors, and these decisions involve professional, economic, and social implications for the officers. In return, attitudes of the employees toward their organizations also affect certain work-related outcomes. Officers’ perceptions of their organizations could shape their job satisfaction, rule adherence, officer-citizen encounters, engagement in misconduct, quality and quantity of work, likelihood of staying with the organization, and commitment to the organization. The notion of organizational justice has been shown to be a key factor regarding the relationship between the employees and their organizations. A large body of empirical evidence within organizational justice, criminology/criminal justice, and organizational behavior/management scholarship indicates that perceived organizational justice is a positive predictor of beneficial workplace attitudes and behaviors (Donner et al., 2015; Kutnjak Ivković & Sauerman, 2016; Kutnjak Ivković & Klockars, 1998; Kutnjak Ivković & Shelley, 2010; Tyler et al., 2007; Wolfe & Lawson, 2020).

A review of the literature reveals that police officers who believe that they receive fair treatment by their supervisors have higher levels of productivity, job satisfaction, and commitment to their organizations (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Farmer et al., 2003, Frear et al., 2018). Conversely, officers who perceived that they have experienced organizational injustice are more likely to engage in misconduct and adhere to the code of silence (Myhill & Bradford, 2013; Tankebe & Meško, 2014; Wolfe & Lawson, 2020; Wolfe & Piquero, 2011). Studies of perceived organizational justice among police personnel in several countries yielded similar results (Carless, 2006; Crow et al., 2012; Haberfeld & Kutnjak Ivković, 2015; Wu & Maken, 2019).

This chapter explores the nature of the relationship between organizational justice and the code of silence. In particular, we examine how organizational justice shapes the police officers’ perceptions and their willingness to report misconduct. A two-step analysis is utilized to test these organizational effects on the code of silence. In the first step of our study, we utilize bivariate analyses to test whether organizational justice is related to the code of silence. In the second step, we employ multivariate analyses to test the effects of the organizational justice on the police officers’ adherence to the code of silence while controlling for traditional police integrity measures.

Organizational Justice

Colquitt (2001) suggested that organizational justice consists of four distinct dimensions. These dimensions are distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice. Distributive justice refers to the fairness of decision outcomes (Adams, 1965; Colquitt, 2001; Deutsch, 1975; Homans, 1961; Leventhal, 1976). It is about the justice in the distribution of organizational resources. Procedural justice refers to “justice of the processes that lead to decision outcomes” (Colquitt, 2001: 386). Procedural justice is attained by giving employees a voice in the decision-making process or influence over the decision outcomes, or by commitment to just process elements (Thibaut & Walker, 1975). A fair decision-making process should involve consistency, lack of bias, correctability, representation, accuracy, and ethicality (Leventhal, 1980; Leventhal et al., 1980). Interpersonal justice refers to the level of respect and propriety that employees receive from their supervisors (Colquitt, 2001). Informational justice refers to the way employees are treated by their supervisors. It is about whether supervisors treat their subordinates with dignity, respect, in a polite manner, and without improper remarks or comments (Colquitt, 2001).

Effects of Organizational Justice on Police Attitudes and Behavior

The relationship between organizational justice and organizational outcomes in corporate environments has been examined by several studies (Bechtoldt et al., 2007; Byrne, 2005; Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt et al., 2001). The research has demonstrated that corporate employees who experience fair behaviors from their supervisors are more likely to engage in positive organizational behaviors, and show greater job satisfaction and productivity (Ambrose & Schminke, 2009; Byrne, 2005; McFarlin & Sweeney, 1992). The research has also indicated that the existence of organizational justice in corporate environments tends to reduce the number of behaviors that are in conflict with organizational rules, goals, and expectations (Colquitt et al., 2002; Fox et al., 2001).

Organizational justice means more to police officers and correctional officers compared to corporate employees (Wolfe & Lawson, 2020). Because police officers and correctional officers are exposed to danger on a daily basis, are accountable for their wrongdoings, and are expected to respond to a variety of problems, they have to deal with a significant amount of uncertainty (Wolfe et al., 2018). Wolfe et al. (2018) argue that organizational justice greatly helps police officers and correctional officers to handle this uncertainty. Thus, organizational justice has been considered to be an important predictor of positive and negative work attitudes and behaviors among criminal justice employees.

Cohen-Charash and Spector (2001) suggest that organizational justice has effects on the attitudes of the employees and, therefore, influences job performance. Lind and Tyler (1988) found a positive correlation between perceived organizational justice and employee’s evaluation of the organization, commitment, and loyalty to the organization. In another illustrative study, Rosenbaum and McCarty (2017) revealed that, when the officers observe higher levels of organization-wide, supervisory, leadership, and diversity justice, they display higher levels of positive behaviors (i.e., organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and rule compliance).

Indeed, organizational justice is perceived to be positively associated with desirable behavior in police agencies (Kutnjak Ivković & Saueman, 2016; Kutnjak Ivković & Shelley, 2010; Wolfe & Piquero, 2011). Tyler et al. (2007) found that police officers who report positive views of organizational justice were more likely to follow organizational rules and defer to organizational policies. Similarly, Haas et al. (2015) found a positive correlation between fair treatment by the supervisors and police officers’ compliance with agency policies. Rothwell and Baldwin (2007) also found a positive relationship between perceived organizational justice and willingness to report police misconduct. Similarly, Kutnjak Ivković and Sauerman (2016) found that South African police officers who felt there was procedural justice in police disciplinary processes were less likely to say that they would adhere to the code of silence.

The research findings have consistently demonstrated a positive association between perceptions of organizational justice and adherence to rules and policies of the agencies (Bradford et al., 2014; Haas et al., 2015; Kutnjak Ivković & Shelley, 2010; Kutnjak Ivković & Sauerman, 2016; Reynolds & Helfers, 2019; Rothwell & Baldwin, 2007; Tyler et al., 2007, Wolfe & Piquero, 2011). Several studies have attempted to explain why this association exists, and have found that attitudes of the officers toward their organizations might have a potential mediating effect on the association between organizational justice and rule adherence (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt et al., 2001; Dick, 2011; Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tankebe, 2010). Some researchers have argued that organizational commitment serves as a potential mediating mechanism (Fridell et al., 2020; Lind & Tyler, 1988).

Farmer et al. (2003) studied the perceptions of American police officers and found a positive correlation between organizational justice and organizational commitment. Subsequent studies found additional evidence that perceived organizational justice is positively related to organizational commitment among police officers in Australia (Carless, 2006) and South Korea (Crow et al., 2012). In their meta-review, Donner et al. (2015) documented that perceptions of organizational justice are positively correlated not only with organizational commitment, but also with job satisfaction, trust in the administration, compliance with decisions, and willingness to report misconduct. Similarly, perceived fairness of organizational decision-making process has been found to have a significant effect on trust in the agency, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and desire to stay with the agency (Crow et al., 2012; De Angelis & Kupchik, 2007; Myhill & Bradford, 2013; Wolfe & Piquero, 2011).

Additionally, research on organizational justice has found significant evidence indicating a correlation between procedural justice during the selection process and fairness of the screening test. For example, Truxillo et al. (2002) explored the perceptions of police applicants in the Southern USA about their experiences during the recruitment and selection stage. Truxillo and colleagues’ findings (2002) revealed a positive association between perceived procedural justice in the selection process and fairness of the screening test/timeliness of the feedback. Carless (2006) examined the perceptions of police applicants in Australia and found a positive relationship between perceived procedural justice during the selection process and perceived outcome fairness. Farmer et al. (2003) found a positive correlation between perceived fairness and decision-making in the selection process of undercover officers. Crow et al. (2012) also found a positive relationship between perceived organizational justice and decision-making in job rewards and performance evaluations.

Furthermore, extant research suggests that police officers who believe their supervisors are fair in their organizational behaviors are more likely to treat citizens with procedural justice (Tankebe, 2014). Van Craen and Skogan (2017) also explored the effects of internal procedural justice on officer-citizen interactions, and found that when police officers receive fair treatment from their supervisors, they are more likely to follow the procedural justice concepts of “respect,” “voice,” and “accountability” in their interactions with citizens. Along the same lines, research by Bradford et al. (2014) yielded evidence that British police officers’ perceptions of organizational justice are associated with an increase in their positive views of community policing and with greater self-reported compliance.

Organizational Justice and the Code of Silence

While prior studies have tested the effect of organizational justice on police attitudes and behavior in general, no prior study of which we are aware has directly tested its effects on the police officers’ code of silence. Yet, numerous researchers and theorists have reported a negative correlation between organizational justice and deviant behaviors/police misconduct (Bradford et al., 2014; Haas et al., 2015; Kutnjak Ivković & Sauerman, 2016; Tyler et al., 2007: Wolfe & Piquero, 2011), thus suggesting that the protection of police misconduct committed by fellow officers should also be related to organizational justice.

Previous research has shown that employees who feel they are not fairly treated are more likely to engage in retaliatory behavior (Barclay et al., 2005), theft (Colquitt, et al., 2006), cyberloafing (Lim, 2002), and harmful behavior to organizational property (Colquitt et al., 2001). As a negative workplace behavior, police misconduct has been an issue of great concern in contemporary societies (Fridell et al., 2020; Lersch, 2002; Palmiotto, 2001; Van Craen & Skogan, 2017). Because of its potential to produce adverse consequences for the individual officer, the individual citizen, the community, and the police profession, the issue of police misconduct was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing in the United States (2015). The final report (2015) of the President’s Task Force suggests that procedural justice within the police organizations is an important facet of addressing the issue of police misconduct.

Van Craen and Skogan (2017) also noted that officers’ direct supervisors are of crucial importance in police organizations because their behaviors shape the officers’ perceptions, including their perceptions of organizational justice. If they are not fair and rule-bound, officers are more likely to display negative behaviors in their interactions with citizens. In line with this, research by Haas et al. (2015) explored non-compliance by police officers. They studied the perceptions of police officers of the Metropolitan Police in Buenos Aires and found that fair treatment by supervisors and fair decision-making may facilitate the implementation of organizational policies and contribute to a reduction in police misconduct.

Wolfe and Piquero (2011) explored the effects of organizational justice on police officers in Philadelphia; they found a negative correlation between organizational justice and noble-cause corruption, citizen complaints, number of internal affairs investigations, and number of departmental charges. Furthermore, results from Tankebe’s (2014) study showed a negative association between organizational justice and the use of force. Not surprisingly, the findings of Donner et al. (2015) also revealed a negative relationship between organizational justice and police officers’ determination to engage in police misconduct. In their study of the relationship between organizational justice and police officer attitudes toward misconduct, Fridell et al. (2020) found a direct correlation between perceptions of organizational justice and the police officers’ support for misconduct.

This Chapter

Extant research on the code of silence has demonstrated that organizational variables are the critical predictors of the police officers’ expressed willingness to report, while individual characteristics do not serve as such strong predictors. In this chapter, we expand the traditional police integrity approach by incorporating the effect of organizational justice on the police officers’ adherence to the code of silence. While prior studies have tested the effect of organizational justice on police attitudes and behavior in general, no prior study of which we are aware has tested its effects on the attitudes toward different forms of police misconduct, including police corruption, use of excessive force, organizational deviance, and interpersonal deviance.

Methodology

Sample

In the later 2010s, we have surveyed police officers from a medium-size municipal police agency in the United States. Our sample includes 148 sworn police officers. For characteristics of our sample and police agency, please see Chaps. 1 and 2.

Measures

The analyses presented in this chapter explore the effects of organizational justice on the respondents’ expressed willingness to report misconduct. Our measures of police integrity, including the code of silence, come from 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 the respondents read each of these 12 scenarios, they were asked to answer seven identical questions, including questions asking the respondents to assess misconduct seriousness, their familiarity with official rules, their estimates of the appropriate and expected discipline, and their willingness to report misconduct. For details, please see Chaps. 1 and 2.

Dependent Variable

The dependent variable in this chapter is the respondents’ expressed own adherence to the code of silence for reporting misconduct. It is built upon the answers to the question asking the respondents their willingness to report misconduct described in each scenario. While answering this question, 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 measure of code of silence was created by recoding the variable such that values of 1 and 2 (i.e., generally unwilling to report) were coded as a 1 with other values were coded as a 0.

Organizational Independent Variables

The organizational variables in our models 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 expected discipline, and their estimates of most police officers’ willingness to report. For a more detailed description, please see Chap. 2.

Organizational Justice Independent Variables

The questionnaire also contained separate questions measuring various subdimensions of organizational justice, based on the study by Wolfe et al. (2018). The measure was comprised of 14 items that depicted procedural justice (six items), distributive justice (four items), and interactional justice (four items). The specific items and their descriptive statistics are presented in Table 4.1. For each item, the respondents could have selected one answer from a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “strongly disagree” to 5 = “strongly agree.”

Table 4.1 Organizational justice
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All items were subjected to principal axis factoring to determine how the items loaded onto latent constructs. This process initially yielded two factors that had a fair degree of conceptual overlap between both factors (i.e., a high number of double loading items). The number of double loading items suggested the factor analysis may be over-extracting factors based on the number of items (Thompson & Daniel, 1996). In essence, the algorithm is primed to identify more factors rather than fewer factors. This frequently occurs when there is a high degree of correlation between the constructs, as was the case here (ρ = 0.57). This is a common problem in organizational justice research (Colquitt & Shaw, 2005). To address this issue, we created a global measure of organizational justice comprised of all the items, which had evidence of validity (the values of λ, as shown in the last column of Table 4.1, are high, with average value of 0.71) and reliability (α = 0.93).

The bivariate relationship between our latent measure of organizational justice created here and the measure of disciplinary fairness (i.e., −1 for lenient punishment, 0 for fair discipline, and + 1 for harsh discipline), the relationships are inconsistent across scenarios and rather modest in magnitude (i.e., −0.15 < ρ < 0.15). This suggests that, while the measure of disciplinary fairness may be related to the measure of organizational justice, the two measures are certainly not redundant.

Individual Independent Variables

Several variables measured the respondents’ demographic characteristics: 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 analyses again proceed in two stages. The first stage examines the relationship between our latent measure of organizational justice and adherence to the code of silence for each of the 12 scenarios. These are estimated as a series of point-biserial correlations between adherence to the code of silence (1 = yes) and the continuous measure of organizational justice. The second stage of the analyses looks at the multivariate relationships between the traditional police integrity measures, the latent measure of organizational justice created, and measures of the code of silence for each of the scenarios. The multivariate models are again estimated using the cross-folding LASSO technique for inference with the same controls as prior chapters. For additional details on this technique, please see Chap. 2.

Results

The Effects of Organizational Justice on the Code of Silence

We first analyzed the bivariate relationship between the latent measure of organizational justice created (items listed in Table 4.1) and the adherence to the code of silence for each of the scenarios (Table 4.2). The results indicate that, generally speaking, there is a negative relationship between the adherence to the code of silence and organizational justice. This is consistent with prior research on the topic of organizational misconduct (e.g., Colquitt & Shaw, 2005).

Table 4.2 Bivariate association between organizational justice variables and code of silence
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There are a few exceptions to this rule (Table 4.2). In particular, there are four scenarios (shooting suspect in back; supervisor fails to stop beating, cover-up of DUI crash, and false rumors about coworker) for which the perceptions of organizational justice and the code of silence are positively correlated, thus contraindicating the results from the prior research. However, in only two of these scenarios (shooting a suspect in the back and covering up a DUI crash) the results are statistically significant. It is unclear what is different about these scenarios compared to the others, although two of the contraindicated findings are scenarios depicting the excessive use of force.

Next, we look at the average value of ρ between organizational justice and adherence to the code of silence across the four different types of scenarios (i.e., corruption, excessive force, organizational deviance, and interpersonal deviance). The strongest and most consistent predictors are for police corruption (with the average relationship M = −0.21, SD = 0.04), followed by organizational deviance (M = −0.13, SD = 0.24), interpersonal deviance (M = −0.07, SD = 0.16), and, lastly, the use of excessive force (M = −0.01, SD = 0.26). Overall, these results suggest that organizational justice has a more consistent relationship with adherence to the code of silence for certain types of scenarios than others.

The Effects of Organizational Justice and Police Integrity on the Code of Silence

Prior to looking at the results of the organizational justice measure, let us examine the results from the traditional police integrity measures from Chap. 2. The results are presented in Table 4.3. Overall, the results from the other police integrity measures remain relatively consistent with the findings from Chap. 2, although the addition of organizational justice does stabilize some of the estimates a bit (i.e., homogenizes the standard errors), which results in some effects being statistically significant here, but not in Chap. 2.

Table 4.3 Organizational justice effects on the code of silence
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Police Corruption

The results for the traditional police integrity measures remain relatively consistent with the models in prior chapters. Specifically, for corruption, we note that, compared to the baseline models, we see that the substantive interpretation remains relatively consistent with the results from Chap. 2. In fact, all the same variables are significant and, apart from the effect of others’ adherence to the code of silence, all other variable effects were slightly diminished compared to the baseline models. The only exception to this general rule is the strength of the relationship between the anticipated other police officers’ adherence to the code of silence and officers’ own adherence to the code of silence for the scenario depicting supervisory errands, where the effect was augmented by 50.86% with the addition of organizational justice compared to the baseline models. In other words, in the case of supervisory corruption, an officer’s willingness to adhere to the code of silence—as of that of his/her peers—is strongly influenced by perceptions of organizational justice.

The effect of organizational justice on adherence to the code of silence is negative for the corruption scenarios, although it is statistically significant in only two of the three scenarios (gifts, theft from burglary). The effects of organizational justice are stronger in the least serious scenario (i.e., accepting free gifts; OR = 0.45, p < 0.001), compared to the most serious corruption scenario (i.e., theft from a crime scene; OR = 0.72, p < 0.001). We offer a potential explanation for this finding. Theft from a burglary scene is typically identified as the most serious scenario by officers, and is the scenario in which the lowest percent of the officers indicated that they would not report. As such, the effect of organizational justice may be limited because of the more ubiquitous willingness to report this sort of behavior (i.e., only 5% of officers reported being unwilling to report this behavior). Conversely, the scenario receiving free gifts is seen as least serious and most likely to be protected by the code of silence (i.e., more than 65% of officers reported being unwilling to report this behavior).

Use of Excessive Force

We now turn to the effects of organizational justice on adhering to the code of silence for scenarios depicting the use of excessive force , also shown in Table 4.3. We start by comparing the results of the traditional measures of police integrity to those from the baseline models presented in Chap. 2. Again, we see almost the same pattern of results as those from Chap. 2, although the inclusion of the organizational justice variable slightly changes the magnitude of the effects for the traditional police integrity variables in the scenario in which a supervisor failed to report a beating. The others’ perceived adherence to the code of silence remains significantly and positively associated with the respondents’ own anticipated adherence to the code of silence in the new models. Furthermore, the estimated other police officers’ adherence to the code of silence is the strongest predictor of an officer’s own adherence to the code of silence in the use of excessive force scenarios.

Perceptions of organizational justice are unrelated, both substantively and significantly, to the adherence to the code of silence for the scenarios depicting the use of excessive force. It may be that, in these sorts of situations, the effects of organizational justice are masked by feelings about the likely fairness of the discipline that an officer is likely to receive given the national discourse about police use of force. In other words, because of the sensitive nature of police use of force in modern American society, without considering the fairness of the discipline (see Chap. 3), the effects of organizational justice may remain hidden because of the politically sensitive nature of these scenarios.

Organizational Deviance

The effects of organizational justice on adherence to the code of silence in organizational and interpersonal deviance scenarios are presented in Table 4.3. We start by examining the effects of the traditional police integrity variables and note that, after the inclusion of organizational justice, the results are similar to those from Chap. 2, with some key differences. For example, while the perceived others’ adherence to the code of silence is still significantly associated with an officer’s own adherence to the code of silence in these situations, the effects are diminished. Furthermore, in the scenario of a false sick report from an officer, we can no longer estimate the independent effect of others’ adherence to the code of silence because it becomes a perfect or redundant predictor (i.e., those, and only those, who feel that others would not report, will not report themselves).

For the false sick report, the respondents express a greater willingness to see offenders disciplined. After all, minor discipline compared to intermediary discipline increases the risk of adherence to the code of silence, while termination compared to intermediary discipline significantly reduces adherence to the code of silence. It is unclear why for only this scenario officers express this type of sentiment. One salient and potentially relevant fact is this is the only situation in which a non-involved officer may have his/her life affected. In other words, an officer calling out sick may mean that someone else would get held over to cover for that shift or the offending officer’s colleagues may be forced to work harder in his/her absence.

Next, we turn to the results of organizational justice on the adherence to the code of silence in these organizational deviance scenarios. Here, organizational justice exerts an inconsistent relationship on the adherence to the code of silence for these three scenarios. In the scenario depicting the cover-up of a DUI crash involving a fellow officer, perceptions of organizational justice are significantly related to the adherence to the code of silence (OR = 1.18, p < 0.05), whereas organizational justice exerts a negative effect for false reporting of overtime (OR = 0.61, p < 0.001) and no significant effect on reporting an officer for a false sick report.

Interpersonal Deviance

Finally, we turn to the results for interpersonal deviance, also presented in Table 4.3, and present the results for the traditional police integrity measures. There are two patterns of results of particular relevance. First, the effect of recognizing that a particular scenario is a violation of department policy exerts an inconsistent effect across scenarios. For the scenario involving yelling at coworkers, this effect is positive (OR = 2.61, p < 0.001). For spreading false rumors about a coworker, the effect is negative (OR = 0.37, p < 0.001). Finally, the effect is insignificant for the scenario depicting telling sexist jokes.

This conjecture may be supported by the second interesting finding here. Notably, officers report that any form of discipline—especially dismissal—increases adherence to the code of silence in a particular situation. In other words, these two findings may suggest that police officers may not see these scenarios as deviant and, accordingly, their decision to report is based on the perceived harm relative to the perceived likelihood in how the situation will be handled.

The effect of organizational justice is again not as consistent in these scenarios as in others. Perceptions of organizational justice should reduce the likelihood of adhering to the code of silence for telling sexist jokes and yelling at coworkers, yet they are not statistically significant. In fact, perceptions of organizational justice are only significantly associated with an increased likelihood of adhering to the code of silence in the scenario depicting spreading false rumors about a coworker (OR = 1.50, p < 0.001). This finding is unexpected. Generally, in an agency in which an officer perceives higher levels of organizational justice, the officer should feel more comfortable reporting when a member of the organization is being treated unjustly by another member, but that does not seem to be the case here. Without additional data, we cannot explore what is different about this scenario relative to the others so that it causes this finding.

Conclusion

The police are given the power and authority to control the behavior of others, and they are expected to carry out their complex and difficult tasks with integrity. Although the most troublesome or tragic examples of police misconduct (e.g., the George Floyd case) constitute a small fraction of daily police-citizen interactions, police misconduct creates an aura of suspicion, mistrust, and uncertainty. Police misconduct is a serious matter whenever it occurs, and it has far-reaching consequences for the employee, the police profession, and ultimately for the whole society (Kappeler et al., 1998; Lersch, 2002). Therefore, it is essential to study the efficacy of the mechanisms that are utilized to prevent police misconduct. In this chapter, we tested the organizational justice effects on the police officers’ willingness to report misconduct on the scenarios describing police corruption, use of excessive force, organizational deviance, and interpersonal deviance.

Our bivariate analyses revealed a negative relationship between organizational justice and the respondents’ adherence to the code of silence in two-thirds of the scenarios (8 out of 12). This finding is consistent with the extant research (e.g., Carless, 2006; Colquitt & Shaw, 2005; Crow et al., 2012; Haberfeld & Kutnjak Ivković, 2015; Myhill & Bradford, 2013; Tankebe & Meško, 2014; Wolfe & Lawson, 2020; Wolfe & Piquero, 2011; Wu & Maken, 2019). In two of the twelve scenarios (i.e., shooting suspect in back; cover-up of DUI crash), we found a positive and statistically significant relationship between organizational justice and the adherence to the code of silence, which does not fit well with the findings reported in previous research. It is unclear why the relationship is positive in these scenarios.

Furthermore, our bivariate analyses yielded strong evidence indicating that organizational justice has a more consistent relationship with the adherence to the code of silence across certain types of scenarios. We found that the organizational justice is the strongest and most consistent predictor of the adherence to the code of silence for police corruption scenarios. The effects on the organizational deviance scenarios and the interpersonal deviance scenarios are somewhat less consistent, while organizational justice was not linked with the adherence to the code of silence for the excessive force scenarios at all.

Not surprisingly, our multivariate analyses yielded a negative relationship between organizational justice and the respondents’ own determination to adhere to the code of silence across the corruption scenarios. This negative relationship is significant for two of three corruption scenarios (i.e., gifts, theft from burglary). Our analyses also yielded some interesting results. Organizational justice has stronger effects in the accepting free gifts scenario compared to the theft from the crime scene scenario. The limited effect of organizational justice in the theft from the crime scene scenario can be explained by the finding that the majority of the respondents are willing to report this type of misconduct.

We found no relationship between organizational justice and the respondents’ willingness to report misconduct in the excessive force scenarios. While it is unclear why these two variables are unrelated, it can be argued that the effects of organizational justice may be masked by the politically sensitive nature of the police use of force in contemporary American society. Our results suggest a plausible interpretation that, in the present moment and historical context, organizational justice plays a secondary role in the excessive force scenarios.

Our multivariate analyses of the effects of organizational justice on respondents’ own willingness to adhere to the code of silence in organizational deviance scenarios revealed an inconsistent relationship. While perceived organizational justice has a significant positive effect on the adherence to the code of silence in covering up a DUI crash scenario, it has a significant negative effect in the false overtime reporting scenario, and has no significant effect on the adherence to the code of silence in the false sick report scenario. Additional data are needed to explain why the relationship between the perceptions of organizational justice and respondents’ decision to adhere to the code of silence varies so widely across organizational deviance scenarios.

Similarly, our multivariate analyses indicated that perceptions of organizational justice have inconsistent effects on the respondents’ willingness to report misconduct in interpersonal deviance scenarios. While the effects of organizational justice on adherence to the code of silence are negative and insignificant in telling sexist jokes and yelling at coworkers scenarios, they are positive and significant in the spreading false rumors about a coworker scenario. This finding is unexpected because it would be reasonable to assume that officers should be more likely to report false rumors about a colleague when they believe that organizational justice exists in their agency, which is not the case here. Because some omitted factors, those not included in our multivariate models, may also affect the adherence to the code of silence, this puzzle will remain unanswered without additional data asking about officers’ reasons for their decision.

Overall, our findings provide insight into what we know about the body of research on the code of silence. Police administrators could benefit from studying the effects of organizational justice on the adherence to the code of silence, and could more effectively tailor their policies and create a workplace where perceptions of organizational justice are promoted and the support for misconduct is reduced. Our findings also shed light on what we do not know and what needs to be examined in the future (e.g., the relationship between organizational justice and the respondents’ decision to adhere to the code of silence across organizational deviance scenarios).

In the next chapter, we will examine the effects of self-legitimacy on police officers’ prosocial and antisocial behaviors. Specifically, we will explore whether self-legitimacy can enhance the ability of the police integrity theory to explain officers’ adherence to the code of silence. First, we will provide the theoretical explanations of the relationship between willingness to adhere to the code of silence and self-legitimacy. Then, we will present and discuss the results of bivariate and multivariate analyses that explain the correlation between these two measures.