Researchers Study What Happens When Officers Break the Law

University of Mississippi, Old Dominion professors examine factors that influence punishment for errant police officers

By Clara Turnage

Law enforcement officers are statistically more likely to get away with crimes than civilians. And police officers often face less severe punishment than civilians once convicted. But a new study indicates that multiple factors influence whether an officer is ever charged and how harshly he or she is sentenced.

Francis Boateng, associate professor of criminal justice and legal studies at the University of Mississippi, and Old Dominion University professor Daniel Pryce have studied the complex factors that influence decision-making in criminal cases against police officers. Their results were published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice.

“There is always the question, ‘Who polices the police?'” Boateng said. “Well, the police do. Then what happens when they commit a crime? “That question led us to investigate these decisions about police officers who have been arrested for engaging in criminal behavior.”

Boateng and Pryce studied more than 6,000 criminal cases and found that on-duty officers are less likely to be severely punished than those who are off duty. Additionally, cases involving children, women, or drugs often brought harsher punishments.

The researchers also found that the higher the person’s rank, the more likely the officer was to be given a harsher punishment.

“Understanding how officers are punished by their agencies and the court system is important,” said Pryce, associate professor and associate chair of the ODU Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice. “If we know that when an officer commits a crime, that person will be held responsible for their actions, that makes us feel more confident as citizens.

“We do know that, yes, officers tend to get punished less severely, if you compare them to regular citizens, and that’s in large part because of qualified immunity and unions.”

Qualified immunity is a legal protection that shields officers from being charged or sued for actions necessary to their job, such as handcuffing or restraining someone. Without qualified immunity, every arrest would be a kidnapping, but officers have also used the law against allegations of assault, misconduct, and murder.

“The qualified immunity clause needs to change because it is not only a hindrance to punishment or prosecution charges for police crimes, but it also encourages officers to engage in misconduct because if I am a police officer, and I know if I engage in this behavior, it will be difficult for me to be charged, I will do it,” Boateng said.

“That is probably one of the reasons why some of these police officers are quick to shoot, quick to kill, engage in all kinds of behavior, and so many of them go free. The qualified immunity clause simply puts the officer above the law.”

Police unions are another barrier to the prosecution of officers, Pryce said. Officers often pay dues to their local union, which in turn provides a lawyer for officers who find themselves accused of crimes.

“It’s true that police unions will quickly fall behind and support an officer—even bad officers—but we also know that when a prosecutor decides to prosecute a case against an officer, it’s likely to go through the entire legal process,” he said.

Although the researchers found that some of the infrastructure of policing can be exploited in favor of officers, the evidence suggests many local law enforcement agencies do a good job overall of policing their officers, Boateng and Pryce said.

Those departments that do not, however, often erode trust in their community and in the profession.

“In 72% of the cases where an officer was charged, that officer was convicted, Boateng said. “That is significant. That shows that the criminal justice system is responsive to these cases.

“The internal mechanism for ‘Who polices the police?’ can work.”

Neither Boateng nor Pryce called for more oversight of departments that have a proven history of success. But departments with repeated failures should have more supervision, they agreed.

“What I want people to take away from the study is that police departments tend to self-police themselves, but they can do better—they can do more,” Pryce said. “This research is important in the sense that police legitimacy is important for the community.

“If there’s no trust, the police can’t rely on us to help provide information. It’s a vicious cycle. If we don’t trust them, they can’t trust us.”