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This chapter is devoted to the theoretical explanations of police misconduct, beginning with a review of previous theoretical work (of which there is comparatively little) and then exploring the application of criminological theory to police misconduct. As noted, the empirical examinations from previous chapters do not explicitly test criminological theories, though they are informed by several theoretical frameworks. This chapter describes in detail how mainstream criminological theories such as strain, social learning, control, and life-course perspectives might ground future examinations of police misconduct. Furthermore, the chapter uses findings from chapter 5 to highlight both the prospects and limitations of using criminological theories to explain police misconduct.

A brief history of the politics of police discretion is explored in this chapter. The Court has been the driving force for change in policing for thirty years, however, this chapter contends that the dominance of the Supreme Court has created several unfortunate effects on police discretion. The chapter redirects thinking to a broad range of discretionary decision points. The analysis undertaken in this chapter operates on the assumption that the Supreme Court is not presently the primary instrument for either controlling police discretion or reducing police misconduct and instead utilizes an administrative rulemaking approach. This chapter aims to identify rules that have developed to govern police discretion, to examine whether those rules work, and to draw conclusions about the possibilities for controlling other police discretionary decisions.

This chapter is a literature review that provides the foundation for the present volume. Specifically, the chapter reports on the literature that has attempted to define police misconduct and describe its prevalence. It is broken down into three parts: Defining and Measuring Police Misconduct, Prevalence of Misconduct, and Empirical Evidence on Causes and Correlates of Police Misconduct. The chapter also reports on the empirical literature that has examined the causes and correlates of police misconduct, highlighting “what we know” about police misconduct. Just as important, the chapter uncovers “what we don't know” about police misconduct and sets the stage for the current study.

This chapter tests the bivariate relationships identified in chapter 4 by employing multivariate techniques to examine the individual-level predictors of police misconduct both for the total sample and for distinct racial/ethnic categories. As noted, because race and ethnicity were the strongest predictors of career-ending misconduct, much of this chapter is devoted to explaining this relationship. This is done by interpreting the findings in the context of a few theories of race and justice (tokenism and conflict theory) as well as by examining the extent to which the predictors of misconduct are salient for both white and nonwhite police officers. In terms of analyses, the chapter reports the results of a logistic regression, a multinomial regression, and a chi-squared automatic interaction detection (CHAID) analysis. These multivariate analyses had formed the bases of hypothesis testing for the present study.

This chapter is a summary of several journal articles that the first author of this text had published between 2002 and 2006, which examined the social ecology of police misconduct, the consequences of police misconduct in structurally disadvantaged communities, as well as the crime reduction potentials of arrest-based policing strategies. It not only examines the causes and consequences of police misconduct at the precinct level, but also considers the consequences of overly aggressive policing strategies that often lead to the very behaviors the police are trying to control—violent crime. This discussion is particularly important because it extends the examination of the NYPD and its practices well into the twenty-first century.

This introductory chapter illustrates the concept of “jammed up”—a ubiquitous shorthand term used to describe when the organization launches an investigation into alleged misconduct (administrative or criminal)—as applied to the NYPD and the difficulty of defining and studying what it means to be jammed up, particularly when using a retrospective design that requires researchers to work backwards to piece together officers' personal and career histories, and when relying on official police department records to do so. This study, previously entitled Bad Cops, encompasses the period spanning from 1975 to 1996, and represents the culmination of perhaps the largest study of police misconduct ever conducted in the United States. In that vein, this chapter likewise presents an overview of the research methodology as well as the case studies to be explored for the remainder of the book.

This concluding chapter reviews key findings from perhaps the largest study of police misconduct ever conducted. The findings here confirm conventional wisdom in a number of ways, particularly with regard to the screening processes departments use to exclude those who are ill-suited for the job. Second, this chapter sought to transition away from bad policing to initiate a dialogue on good policing. To that end, it had introduced a model of good policing, grounded in the late James J. Fyfe's protection of life principle. This model is distinct from police misconduct—or the absence of it—and it might ground future studies of police behavior.

This chapter examines the Criminal Cases Review Commission's response to claims that policing without integrity affects the safety of the applicant's conviction. It first considers cases of wrongful conviction that led to the establishment of two royal commissions on criminal procedure and criminal justice before discussing whether the inclusion of allegations of police misconduct can be the ‘kiss of death for an application to the Commission’ and whether the test of unsafety is more widely protective than a test of innocence. It then explores how the Commission's ‘surround’ influences its decision field and how it assumes a legal frame in making crucial decisions regarding evidence of improper policing. It also analyses cases with police misconduct and non-disclosure as a ground for referral before concluding with an overview of past, present, and future challenges faced by the Commission with regard to the issue of policing without integrity.

Princeton historian Eddie Glaude observes that James Baldwin was revolutionary when he insisted that to understand White Americans required turning their thoughts upside down. Thus White people want to believe that police “serve and protect” everyone equally; yet we show that complaints about police misconduct are concentrated in racially segregated Black neighborhoods. We then show that mid-1990s Black legal cynicism about policing, net of many other factors, predicts complaints about police abuses nearly two decades later, in 2012–2014. In the 1990s, media attention to the police torture of Blacks intensified. We interpret the predictive influence of legal cynicism from this period as reflecting unyielding neighborhood resistance, undertaken in protest and protection of others who experienced police abuse. “History is not the past,” Baldwin explained; “It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, to put it very brutally, we literally are criminals.”

This chapter addresses various responses to the Brixton disturbances; the authorities and media focussed upon criminality and law and order aspects, leading to repeated calls for the police to be further equipped to respond – but, due to the scale of events, a public inquiry was established. Hence, this chapter discusses Lord Scarman’s inquiry through in-depth examination of recently-released inquiry records, such as police radio messages and witness statements, and papers of grassroots political organisations, to explore numerous accusations of police misconduct not included in his Report, addressing some of the gaps between submitted evidence and what was published as official record. Scarman chose not to examine such accusations, suggesting his inquiry could not provide necessary safeguards and that allegations should be directed through the police complaints system; however, this system had lost the faith of marginalised groups, who believed it was ineffective. Conversely, many local groups, such as the Brixton Defence Campaign established to support those arrested in relation to the disorder, vociferously boycotted the inquiry as they believed it would be a ‘whitewash’ and that any evidence provided would actually be used against black defendants.

The chapter uses contemporary policing problems and challenges to evaluate how well training prepares recruits, auxiliaries, detectives, and managers for the police role. It reviews patterns of police corruption, misconduct and complaints against officers and considers whether, and how well, training helps police forces counter such problems. It also notes instances of positive responses to failures of service delivery. The discussion moves on to examine the challenge that diversity poses for the police, both at a cultural level and in respect of the specific experience of female officers, ethnic minority officers, and officers with alternative sexual orientations. The lessons of sickness, stress and injury on duty are considered in relation to how effectively training and supervision helps counter these. A discussion of public confidence and trust is used to address the concept of police legitimacy and to place it in relation to the acquisition of professional competence.

This chapter provides detailed discussion of the Moss Side Defence Committee, through local and understudied national records and original interviews, which is often overlooked in discussions of 1980–1. The Defence Committee, formed to aid those arrested in relation to the disturbances, vehemently opposed the Greater Manchester County Council-established local inquiry into the Moss Side disturbances, and organised a boycott. It was later suggested that dichotomous local responses to state mechanisms allowed progress: that radical groups, such as the Defence Committee, ‘being noisy’ allowed moderates previously unattainable access to the authorities – but the extent to which this was a conscious tactic is debatable. The chapter ends by exploring unstudied interviews with residents and inquiry proceedings, demonstrating the high level of accusations of police misconduct not appearing in the inquiry report, and the continued discontent created by such exclusions.

This chapter examines the interaction and relationship between American prosecutors and police departments, and the consequences of these arrangements for police misconduct and efforts to reform police agencies. It begins with a description of how these disparate but interlocking parts of the American criminal justice system function together, with particular emphasis on two signal characteristics of the American prosecutorial function: the federal nature of prosecution in the United States, and the popular election of the vast majority of American prosecutors. It then describes the implications of police misconduct and suggests possibilities for reforming deficient police practices. It suggests that although the potential for police reform through the efforts of prosecutors may appear bleak, a relatively new federal statute has begun to make a difference. This new law, known as the “pattern or practice” statute, holds the key to making progress in American police practices.

The conclusion brings the case of the Wilmington Ten from the overturning of their convictions into the twenty-first century when they received pardons of innocence in 2012. Returning to the reality that the state of North Carolina ruined lives in order to forestall inevitable change and combat radicalism, the conclusion briefly examines what happened to the individual members of the Wilmington Ten. It also reappraises the movement to free them in light of recent scholarship on the trajectory of African American politics and black radicalism. Since this century began, North Carolina has pulsed with struggle over the types of issues that characterized the conflicts of the 1970s. Public schools have re-segregated, and state government’s support for quality education for all has been hijacked by a mania for charter, religious, and for-profit schools. Fighters for criminal justice reform have brought to light many other cases of wrongful conviction. Police misconduct, including instances of corrupt investigations, brutality and death under at best questionable circumstances, bubbles to the surface, as in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere. This and more has brought forth in North Carolina collective efforts to find solutions, including the broad-based Moral Monday movement, which has been emulated across the South.

In 1992, 15-year-old Joseph White shot and killed DeLondyn Lawson about a gambling debt at Tilden High School on Chicago’s South Side. RM Daley’s Automatic Transfer Act fast-tracked White for a homicide trial in adult court. The media portrayed White as a violent gang member, although neither White’s nor Lawson’s mothers saw their sons as involved with gangs. The judge thought White should have sought police assistance, but neighborhood legal cynicism about police violence and torture made White fear the police more than a gang fight. He bought a gun to defend himself. The prosecution refused to plea bargain, and the trial painted White as a gangland killer. At the age of 16, White was sentenced to 45 years in an adult maximum security prison, 300 hundred miles away, in the prison where Fred Hampton served time several decades earlier—on a law enforcement pathway to his assassination.

This chapter considers a number of episodes that defined the unrest in the early 1980s, events that tested the ability of the broadcast media to report objectively and accurately about politics, violence, and the state. The overriding question in these years revolved around what could and could not, or what should and should not, be shown on television. The threat of direct government intervention to suppress programmes about the conflict lurked in the background throughout this period, encouraging a subtle but pervasive form of self-censorship that worked its way into the culture of British broadcasting. The chapter also explores American involvement in the conflict by addressing the visits of the militant Irish Northern Aid Committee or Noraid to Ireland in 1984. When addressing television coverage leading up to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement the chapter considers the infamous 1984 IRA bombing in Brighton that nearly killed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In exploring controversial programming the chapter addresses investigative reporting that uncovered miscarriages of justice in Britain, the thorny issue of the media’s relationship with the police, interviews with paramilitaries, and the defiant spectacle of paramilitary funerals.