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Pathways to Career-Ending Police Misconduct An Examination of Patterns, Timing, and Organizational Responses to Officer Malfeasance in the NYPD
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Pathways to Career-Ending Police Misconduct An Examination of Patterns, Timing, and Organizational Responses to Officer Malfeasance in the NYPD

Michael D. White and Robert J. Kane
Criminal justice and behavior, v 40(11), pp 1301-1325
01 Nov 2013
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854813486269
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel

Abstract

Criminology & Penology Psychology, Clinical Psychology Social Sciences
Prior research has not sufficiently explained the various pathways that lead to career-ending misconduct among police officers, most notably the timing of misconduct in officers' careers, whether certain factors are related to that timing, and whether the types of misdeeds vary over time. The current study seeks to address these questions through an examination of all officers separated from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for career-ending misconduct (n = 1,542) from 1975 to 1996 as well as a comparison sample of officers who served honorably during that same time (n = 1,543). The authors adopt a survival perspective using both Cox regression survival analysis and multinomial logistic regression. Results indicate that time to termination is a complex, long-term process with distinct patterns that emerge over police officers' careers. A number of variables were significantly associated with time to termination across officer careers, such as officer race and prior criminal history, while others were significant only at certain career stages. For example, promotion only protected against termination early in an officer's career, while military service was a predictor of misconduct only after 10 years of service. The article highlights the importance of selection screening out and in processes, as officers with red flags early in their careers were at greatest risk for dismissal. The results also suggest that police departments themselves play an important role in shaping the patterns and timing of officer misconduct. Moreover, the survival framework provides a foundation for a long-overdue dialogue on good policing.

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51 Record Views
37 citations in Web of Science
38 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Criminology & Penology
Psychology, Clinical
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