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Police Integrity in Slovenia

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Measuring Police Integrity Across the World

Abstract

Slovenia is a Central European democracy, independent since 1991. With a population of approximately two million and above 17,000 € gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, it is considered to be quite a successful transitional country from a former socialist republic to a functional democracy. The Slovenian police service employs 8808 personnel, one police officer for every 267 inhabitants. The survey, conducted in spring 2011 on a representative sample of 550 Slovenian police officers, provides an in-depth exploration of police integrity among Slovenian police officers after two decades of Slovene independence and 13 years after the first survey on police integrity with the same methodology was performed. The survey analyzes police integrity from the organizational/occupational culture theory of corrupt behavior perspective. The questionnaire, developed by Klockars and colleagues, consists of 14 hypothetical case scenarios. One of the main findings is that the officers’ own perception of the seriousness of corruption was the most significant determinate of their willingness to report corruption. Expected discipline had no influence on willingness to report corruption. We believe that these results demonstrate a high level of police integrity among police officers in Slovenia. Nevertheless, our results also contain some evidence of the code of silence among the Slovenian police officers.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The conclusions are based on the results of public opinion surveys conducted regularly by the Centre for Research of Public Opinion at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, which included questions related to the police such as “How much do you trust the police?” and “How satisfied are you with the performance of the police?” (Toš 1999, 2004).

  2. 2.

    More information about the Slovenian police is available at http://www.policija.si/eng/index.php/publication.

  3. 3.

    Accessible only in Slovene version at www.policija.si: http://www.policija.si/images/stories/KatalogInformacijJavnegaZnacaja/PDF/akti/program_protikorupciji.pdf.

  4. 4.

    Police annual report for 2011: http://www.policija.si/images/stories/Statistika/LetnaPorocila/PDF/LetnoPorocilo2011.pdf.

  5. 5.

    In 2011, 627 complaints against police officers were addressed: http://www.policija.si/images/stories/Statistika/LetnaPorocila/PDF/LetnoPorocilo2011.pdf.

  6. 6.

    Commission for the Prevention of Corruption since 2002 runs annual public surveys on corruption (Stališča o korupciji). Retrieved August 15, 2012 from http://www.kpk-rs.si/index.php?id=48.

  7. 7.

    http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi.

  8. 8.

    In 2003, it reached a score of 5.9 (occupying the 29th place) and 6.7 in 2008 (occupying the 26th place). In 2009, it reached 6.6; in 2010, 6.4; and in 2011, 5.9.

  9. 9.

    The Commission prepares a document called opinion of principle, where simply identifying and reviewing corruptive practices and does not evaluate criminal or other liabilities of the individual, but is assessing the actions of individuals to see if they meet the criteria, conditions, and definition of corruption, as defined in article 4 of IPCA. Opinions of principle are based on actual cases and reports (Škrbec and DobovŠek 2012).

  10. 10.

    We should remind the readers that one opinion of principle may contain several conducts of corruptive practices. The opinion of principle 219 deals with four different conducts of corruptive practices and several perpetrators, so that their number is not equal to the number of opinions of principle, where corruption has been detected.

  11. 11.

    http://www.kpk-rs.si/sl/nadzor-in-preiskave/odlocitve-in-mnenja-komisije.

  12. 12.

    The list of CPOs was obtained from police internet homepage: http://www.policija.si/index.php/dravljani-in-policija/vodje-policijskih-okoliev.

  13. 13.

    Following the precedent established in prior work (Klockars et al. 2006, p. 26), it can be considered only the differences of 0.50 or larger to be meaningful.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maribor, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Branko Lobnikar & Gorazd Meško

Authors
  1. Branko Lobnikar
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  2. Gorazd Meško
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Correspondence to Branko Lobnikar .

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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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Lobnikar, B., Meško, G. (2015). Police Integrity in Slovenia. 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_7

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