Corruption Issues in Modern Policing Thesis

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Public Corruption Theories:

Society at Large Hypothesis

Wilson's society at large hypothesis suggests that corruption in policing is merely a function of social attitudes and more general inclinations toward corruption in society at large (Delattre, 2006). More specifically, the more deviating from official policies, rules, and laws is an accepted part of society, the more any entities within that society (including law enforcement authorities) will reflect that overall approach to laws in general. Therefore, in societies where preferential treatment for recognizable celebrities or powerful or wealthy individuals is the norm, the more police personnel will extend similar preferential treatment to those individuals. That is because police personnel often come from the communities in which they work and by the time they enter the profession, they tend to have absorbed predominant cultural norms and values (Delattre, 2006).

Structural/Affiliation Hypothesis

Niederhoffer's structural or affiliation hypothesis suggests that one of the principal causes of police corruption is the degree to which new officers become indoctrinated and socialized to accept certain moral and legal transgressions by experienced officers. In that regard, prevailing police culture has the potential power to change the moral compass of individual officers.

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That is precisely how large-scale corruption scandals such as uncovered in New York in the 1970s by the Knapp Commission where an entire culture of graft, corruption, and outright bribery in return for special consideration from officers infected the largest police department in the nation (Delattre, 2006).

Rotten Apple Hypothesis

The rotten apple hypothesis suggests very simply that certain individuals in society are more inclined than others toward unethical and illegal conduct and that a small percentage of them manage to slip through hiring processes designed to weed out individuals of questionable moral character from policing (Delattre, 2006). In the simplest version of this hypothesis, rotten apples are responsible for individual acts of impropriety and corruption but do not necessarily influence the conduct of fellow officers. In the more complex and insidious form of this hypothesis, rotten apples "spoil the bunch" by influencing the behavior of other officers in a manner similar to that responsible for both the society at large and the structural/affiliation hypotheses of police corruption......

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