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Crime Law Soc Change (2009) 51:463486
DOI 10.1007/s10611-008-9184-7
Gary E. March
Published online: 16 January 2009# Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009
Abstract Building on Klockars et. al. (2000) analysis of survey data on police agency integrity, this analysis develops an economic model of police corruption within police agencies. Empirical estimates of the economic model are consistent with Klockars et. al. (2000) in that there is no evidence to support the traditional theory that police agency corruption is attributable to the individual bad-apple. Independent of other factors, the present analysis shows that police culture fosters corruption. Furthermore, the present analysis shows that incentive structures within police agencies increase the problem of corruption as the scale of police agency operation increases. Policies that would promote higher levels of integrity are considered.
Introduction
Klockars et. al. [19] analyzed survey data on police agencies for the purpose of investigating the organizational theory of police corruption. This study attempts to build on the findings and implications of Klockars, et. al. [19] by using Klockars [18] survey data to develop an economic model and empirical estimates of how factors related to organizational structure, such as scale of operations and police culture, predict and explain how specific acts of corruption are related to different sizes of police agencies.
Additional or more specific information about the relationships between police organizational structure and corruption is needed. At present, no studies directly address the issue of police agency scale as it is related to levels of corruption or integrity. If corruption can be shown to be related to a police agencys scale of operations, there would be empirical evidence that argues in favor of organizational structure as an explanatory factor. Moreover, scale diseconomies mean that policies aimed at reducing corruption will increase efficiency as well as improve integrity.
G. E. March (*)
Rogers State University, 1701 W Will Rogers Blvd, Claremore, OK 74017, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Integrity, culture, and scale: an empirical test of the big bad police agency
464 G.E. March
There is no attempt in the present analysis to replicate the interagency analysis of Klockars et. al. [19]. Specifically, survey responses are not aggregated to correspond to individual police agencies. Instead, the data and empirical analysis remains at the individual survey...