A Review of Police Corruption in Australia
The necessity for a law enforcement agency to be beyond reproach in their service to their community is a validation of their authority to maintain the laws and apply punishments. In considering the social phenomenon of police corruption through a research study published by Graycar and Sidebottom, what the central thesis considers is corruption and control by law enforcement utilizing a corruption reduction methodology. In taking this central concept, the purpose is to examine corruption as a significant financial crime, which is estimated by the World Economic Forum to cost about 5 per cent of global GDP or $2.6 trillion dollars. This could be construed as white-collar crime, but due to the unique nature and position of law enforcement, the penalties which have been assigned to those officers who have been caught does not allow for a reliable convergence.
As the peer reviewed research article and study explores the significance of these types of studies, what is considered are the behaviors that accompany these actions, seeking to qualify universal motivators that transcend all law enforcement officers who engaged in illegal activities. The research article considers effective tactics that have led to reduce corruptions, which can be reasonably assigned to stiffer sanctions, organizational reforms and the passing of new laws directed at police corruption. In considering these sanctions, the purpose of the article is to offer a complementary, contemporary perspective on which to examine corruption, with a design methodology that incorporated situational crime prevention and criminological theories. This grounded approach allowed for exploration into how immediate environments play causal roles in generating corruption and subsequently proposes that opportunity reduction can minimize the phenomenon which supports this type of negative behavior.
In an overview of five police corruption cases, utilized as illustrative examples to explore the causal links between predictive behaviors and corruption, applying situational crime prevention responses, subjective outcomes are produced which the author believes can be reasonably applied in law enforcement settings to effectively respond to corruption. The outcome of the historical overview allowed for the development of a Type, Activities, Sectors and Places (TASP), a foundational framework for qualifying and understanding police corruptions through a variety of organizational settings.
One of the central concerns in conducting this review was the subjective nature of the article, where there was no randomization to the cases that were selected to be used as examples in the research and their points were carefully and meticulously backed by selected researchers with no counter-arguments offered by the researcher or the references utilized to validate the assessment. While the central points, examples, and conclusions are all consistent with predictable outcomes aligned with critical thought and common sense, the fact remains that the external validity of this study remains in question. The lack of peer reviews or member checking, allowing for generalizability and confidence in the results and outcomes remain in question, as does questions concerning researcher bias which could have been avoided with the inclusion of experimental oversight.
While the study offers a strong foundation for future studies, its central problems is its methodology, requiring randomization and external oversight to support the validity of its conclusions. The study highlights a significant social problem and phenomenon which argues for social intervention and change which is its primary strength, but its failure to present findings which are generalizable is an area and issue that the researcher could have addressed and subsequently improved the research study.
