Crime-based Survey Instrument for Police Integrity Measurement

Purpose – The common survey instrument for police integrity consists of case descriptions that are mainly concerned with corruption. However, the diversity in police criminal acts calls for a revision of this survey instrument. Based on cases of convicted police officers in Norway, this paper aims to propose a new survey.
Design/methodology/approach – Content analysis of 57 court cases in Norway was carried out.
Findings – Rather than focusing mainly on police corruption, a diversity of police criminal acts was identified in the content analysis.
Research limitations/implications – Court cases in other countries should be analyzed to
improve the proposed questionnaire in future iterations. Rather than measuring police integrity only in terms of corruption, future empirical studies of police integrity should focus on the variety of police criminal acts found in court cases.
Originality/value – The paper focuses on an empirically based survey instrument.