Measuring Police Integrity Across the World

Type Book Section - Police Integrity in Thailand
Title Measuring Police Integrity Across the World
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2015
Publisher Springer
URL https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4939-2279-6_10
Abstract
The Royal Thai Police, a police agency decentralized by law, yet centralized in reality, is under the umbrella of the office of the prime minister. This chapter explores the forms of police integrity among the Thai police officers. The representative stratified sample of 280 police officers, collected in 2013, evaluated hypothetical scenarios describing various forms of police misconduct. Results suggest that police officers evaluated the behaviors described in the scenarios to vary in their seriousness. Only one scenario—an opportunistic theft—was evaluated as very serious and, at the same time, was recognized by the overwhelming majority as rule violating. The respondents thought that most of the described behaviors deserve a milder form of discipline. At the same time, they also expected relatively mild discipline for most of the scenarios. They thought that dismissal was the appropriate and expected discipline only for the opportunistic theft. We also detected the code of silence and concluded that it is not a flat prohibition of reporting. The more serious the respondents perceived the scenarios, the less likely they were to cover it by the code. Finally, the police officers expected that other officers in their agencies would be much more likely to protect all these behaviors in silence than they themselves would.

Related studies

»