The Effect of Organizational and Environmental Factors on Police Misconduct

This study analyzes the association between police organizational and environmental factors and police misconduct using data derived from the new National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (2009–2010). Our use of this data set affords us the opportunity to measure police misconduct with much greater breadth than in previous studies. A negative binomial regression analysis of 497 city police departments shows the following organizational characteristics—organizational size, the presence of a full-time internal affairs unit, and in-service training—salient in predicting police misconduct. The violent crime rate is the only environmental variable that influences police misconduct. These results not only highlight the importance of organizational structure in influencing police officer misconduct but they also suggest that a police department has at its disposal the ability to institute organizational changes that can help attenuate the occurrence of police misconduct.