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Measuring Police Integrity Across the World pp 97–123Cite as

Police Integrity in Croatia

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Abstract

The Croatian police, a centralized police agency, under the auspices of the Croatian Ministry of the Interior, have had a short but turbulent history. This chapter explores the contours of police integrity among the Croatian police. The chapter relies on the police integrity survey conducted in 2008/2009. The representative stratified sample of 966 police officers evaluated hypothetical scenarios describing various forms of police misconduct. We analyze the results across several measures of police integrity, such as the police officers’ knowledge of official rules, evaluations of police misconduct as serious, views about appropriate and expected discipline, and the code of silence. Our results suggest that most police officers had no problems recognizing described behavior as rule violating. The respondents’ evaluations of misconduct seriousness varied substantially across the scenarios. Although the behaviors described in the questionnaire are violations not only of the administrative rules but also of criminal law, our respondents expected dismissal for only two such cases, and expected milder disciplinary options for the rest. Finally, although the code of silence has weakened since the mid-1990s, our results show that it is still present among the Croatian police.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The possible answers were: 1 = “None,” 2 = “Public reprimand,” 3 = “Fine up to 10 % of salary,” 4 = “Fine up to 20 % of salary,” 5 = “Reassignment to a different position,” and 6 = “Dismissal.”

  2. 2.

    Following the rule of thumb established in prior work (Klockars et al. 2006, p. 26), we consider only the differences of 0.50 or larger to be meaningful.

  3. 3.

    Following the rule of thumb established in prior work (Klockars et al. 2006, p. 26), we consider only the differences of 0.50 or larger to be meaningful.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Sanja Kutnjak Ivković

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  1. Sanja Kutnjak Ivković
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Correspondence to Sanja Kutnjak Ivković .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

    Sanja Kutnjak Ivković

  2. City University of New York John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, New York, USA

    M.R. Haberfeld

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Kutnjak Ivković, S. (2015). Police Integrity in Croatia. In: Kutnjak Ivković, S., Haberfeld, M. (eds) Measuring Police Integrity Across the World. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2279-6_4

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