Police corruption and misconduct come apparent in many different forms. A basic definition for police corruption is, when an officer gets involved in offenses where the officer uses his or her position, by act or omission, to obtain improper financial benefit. The main reason for such corruption is typically for personal gain, such as bribery. Police abuse of authority occurs in three different general areas such as physical abuse, psychological abuse, and legal abuse. Physical abuse is such abuse where one uses excessive force or physical harassment.
Police Corruption in America The missions statement of police agencies usually highlight with pride the maintenance, promotion, and protection of peace, order, safety, and justified law enforcement in communities and the entire nation. Police officers are agents meant to bust crimes and get the bad guys. The police agency that the public use to lean on as the legitimate authority figure to come to the rescue however has created conflicting public perception. The misconduct of some police officers that include abuse of power and corruption tainted the good reputation of the agency overtime. The public trust on the agency has been broken and that has caused some members of the society to distrust and have doubts to service motives of police officers.
External corruption is the illegal acts and agreements with the public by one or more officers in a department. For a corrupt act to occur, three distinct elements of police corruption must be present simultaneously: 1) misuse of authority, 2) misuse of official capacity, and 3) misuse of personal attainment. It can be said that power inevitably tends to corrupt, and it is yet to be recognized that, while there is no reason to suppose that policemen as individuals are any less fallible than other members of society, people are often shocked and outraged when policemen are exposed violating the law. The reason is simple. There deviance elicits a special feeling of betrayal.
The reason is simple. There diviance elicits a special feeling of betrayal. "Most studies support the view that corruption is endemic, if not universal, in police departments. The danger of corruption for police, and this is that it may invert the formal goals of the organization and may lead to "the use of organizational power to encourage and create crime rather than to deter it" (Sherman 1978: p 31) General police deviance can include brutality, discrimination, sexual harassment, intimidation, and illicit use of weapons. However it is not particularly obvious where brutality, discrimination, and misconduct end and corruption begin.
Corruption may involve profit or another type of material benefit gained illegally as a consequence of the officer's authority. Typical forms of corruption include bribery, extortion, receiving or fencing stolen goods, and selling drugs. The term also refers to patterns of misconduct within a given police department or special unit, particularly where offenses are repeated with the acquiescence of superiors or through other ongoing failure to correct them,” (Law Library). The different forms of corruption can vary from moderate to severe depending on the nature of the corrupt officer to the person they are exploiting. A more moderate form of bribery would be a police officer accepting money in... ... middle of paper ... ...osed, citizens become untrusting of legal authority and the credibility of the department is compromised.
Police Brutality and Corruption Corruption in policing is viewed as the misuse of authority by a police officer acting officially to fulfill his/her personal needs or wants. There are two distinct elements of corruption; 1) misuse of authority, 2) personal attainment. The occupational subculture of policing is a major factor in both creating police corruption, by initiating officers into corrupt activities, and sustaining it, by covering up corrupt activities by other officers. Police corruption is a complex phenomenon, which does not readily submit to simple analysis. It is a problem that has and will continue to affect us all, whether we are civilians or law enforcement officers.
ost people are scared of retaliation if they report it, and the only time it may come out is in a media reported scandal.Corruption in prisons exists in a variety of forms, from relatively minor instances of theft, large-scale, organized drug-trafficking and counterfeit rings. What each has in common, however, is underlying egoistic motivation whatever its form, corruption is fueled by the desire for personal gain and the willingness and opportunity to neglect moral and legal obligations in its favor. Through his examination of official records of an internal affairs unit, Bernard McCarthy identified several general categories of corrupt conduct in prisons. The categories are theft, stealing valuables and other personal items from inmates during frisks and cell searches. Also,they steal items from visitors during processing, and they steal items from other staff
In addition to protecting criminals or ignoring their activities, officers involved in drug related corruption were more likely to be involved in stealing drugs and/or money from drug dealers, selling drugs, lying under oath about illegal searches, and other crimes. Although not enough data was available upon which to base an estimate of the extent of corruption, the amount of cases of police corruption proved that it was striking enough to concern the public. The most commonly identified patterns of corruption involved small groups of officers who protected and assisted each other in criminal activities. The demands of the public and politicians, however, have caused an outrage and a fear that open investigations and accusations of corruption will cause the problem of distrust in the police to grow even greater. Some police forces seem to have adopted a market-based approach to law enforcement.
Even though, police brutality is a big problem, it is only proving the police wrong when it is clear they are trained to serve and protect with a lot of different protocols in the process of the whole situation. The police would only react to a perp violently and with force if they felt threatened and when this happens local news and internet makes it look as if police are the bad guys which in some situations they are, but others they aren 't they are just doing their job as officers to serve and protect. Three possible solutions to this problem would be firing the officer, giving them jail time, or even treating them as they treated the victim for reasons that did not require brutal force, but in other cases the pipe should be the one in
In today’s society, we live amongst people who are quick to judge others and point fingers rather than looking at the bigger picture. A hot topic, as of late, is the corruption within the criminal justice system, whether that is with our officers at the local level or within the correctional system itself. “Police corruption can be defined as actions that exploit the powers of law enforcement in return for considerations of private-regarding benefit and that violate formal standards governing his or her conduct” (Williams & Arrigo, 2008, p.96). Corruption, at its core is for nothing more than one’s own personal gain. We will explore many aspects of corruption within our police departments, corrections and how this implicates continued unethical