See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/281614543

Police Ethics and Integrity

Conference Paper · June 2000

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3973.9367

CITATIONS READS

0 5,084

1 author:

Milan Pagon
Independent University, Bangladesh
55 PUBLICATIONS   2,166 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Milan Pagon on 09 September 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

POLICE ETHICS AND INTEGRITY
Milan Pagon
Professor and Dean
College of Police and Security Studies
University of Maribor, Slovenia

ABSTRACT
The paper deals with the importance of police ethics and integrity in contemporary
policing. It first describes the field of applied ethics in general. It explains the basis for
the structure of professional moral obligations, briefly depicts the core imperatives of
applied ethics and describes the process of moral reasoning. It then defines police eth-
ics, discusses the reasons for its relative underdevelopment, and delineates its future
development in three interrelated directions: (a) applying the principles of applied eth-
ics to police profession; (b) establishing standards of ethical conduct in policing; and
(c) defining the means and content of education and training in police ethics. Next, it
discusses the organizational environment that is conducive to police ethics and elabo-
rates on the concept of integrity. The paper concludes that police ethics and integrity
are of critical importance in the professionalization of policing and the best antidotes
to police corruption, brutality, neglect of human rights, and other forms of police devi-
ance.

Attribution:
Pagon, M. (2000). Police ethics and integrity. In: M. Pagon, (Ed.) Policing
in Central and Eastern Europe: Ethics, Integrity and Human Rights. Ljubljana,
Slovenia: College of Police and Security Studies, pp. 3-14.

INTRODUCTION

For all of us in the field of police and security studies, it has become obvious that we
are witnessing a paradigm shift. While we cannot expect this shift to result in a uniform
approach to policing everywhere in the world, we can assume that all the various ap-
proaches will be based on the same set of assumptions of modern policing, namely the
community involvement, a proactive approach that emphasizes prevention, profession-
alism, innovation, and problem-solving, and an integrated view of criminal justice (Pa-
gon, 1998).

In this process, policing is getting closer to professionalization, a change long advocated

by police scholars. As several authors (e.g., Hahn, 1998; Vicchio, 1997; Murphy, 1996;
Fry & Berkes, 1983) point out, aspirations by the police to become professionalized
either create or at least re-emphasize several requirements, such as wide latitude of
discretion, higher educational requirements, higher standards of professional conduct,
and self-regulation.

At the same time, however, we have witnessed countless accounts of police brutality
and abuse of authority, some of them making the headlines, and others taking place
outside the public eye. In some countries, police corruption has already reached epi-
demic proportions. It is obvious that corruption, brutality, and other forms of police
deviance go against the above-mentioned efforts for police professionalization and com-
munity involvement. The community cannot trust nor attribute a professional status
to deviant police officers. No wonder then, that modern police organizations all over the
world are fighting police deviance, trying to achieve proper conduct of their members.
However, according to Sykes (1993), a brief history of these efforts to enhance police
accountability reveals that they relied on rules and punishment. “Although each of
these reform efforts had an impact, the sum total fell short of providing assurances
that they were adequate and serious incidents continued… In short, the various rule-
based systems of accountability seem insufficient if officers hold different values or
there is a subculture which nurture values different from the ideals of democratic po-
licing” (p.2). The author believes the answer lies in approaches based on ethics, where
accountability rests more on individual responsibility than it does on external controls
and threatened punishment.

It has become obvious that only the properly educated and trained police officers are
able to respond adequately to moral and ethical dilemmas of their profession. Only a
police officer who is able to solve these dilemmas appropriately can perform his duties
professionally and to the benefit of the community. In doing so, he cannot rely solely
on his intuition and experience. Not only he has to be well acquainted with the princi-
ples of police ethics and trained in moral reasoning and ethical decision-making, he
also needs clear standards of ethical conduct in his profession.

In this article, I will try to show that a proper development of police ethics and integrity
is one of the most important steps toward professionalization of policing, and one of
the most powerful antidotes to police deviance and neglect of human rights by the
police. To introduce the field of police ethics, however, I first have to describe the field
of applied ethics in general.

APPLIED ETHICS

Police ethics is a branch of applied normative, ethics. The most well-known branches
of applied ethics are medical and business ethics. The link between ‘theory’ and ‘prac-
tice’ is what makes applied ethics different from philosophical ethics. Applied ethics is
the field that holds ethical theory accountable to practice and professional practice
accountable to theory. Therefore, the philosophers should not dictate to professionals
the norms that are supposed to govern their professional practice, without a very thor-
ough knowledge of that practice. On the other hand, the professionals have to under-
stand that their experience and intuition are insufficient for defensible judgment, and
that all their constraints do not exempt their decisions from ethical scrutiny (Newton,
Internet).

Newton (Internet) believes that if ethics is about human beings, we should be able to
determine the structure of our moral obligations from three basic, simple, readily ob-
servable facts about human beings:

- People are embodied. They exist in time and space and are subject to physical
laws. They have needs that must be satisfied if they are to survive. They must con-
trol the physical environment to satisfy those needs. Failure to do so leads to pain
and suffering. The implication for ethics is that the relief of that suffering and the
satisfaction of those needs should be out first concern, giving rise to duties of com-
passion, non-maleficence, and beneficence.
- People are social. Whatever problems they have with their physical environment,
they have to solve them in groups, which creates a new set of problems. They must
cope with a social environment as well as the physical one. The social environment
produces two further needs: for a social structure to coordinate social efforts, and
for means of communication. The implication for ethics is that we must take ac-
count of each other in all our actions. We have obligations to the group in general
and to other members of the group of particular.
- People are rational. People are able to consider abstract concepts, use language,
and think in terms of categories, classes and rules. Because people are rational,
they can make rational choices, they are autonomous moral agents. They can also
 realize that they could have done it differently, so they can feel guilty and remorse
and assume responsibility for their choices. Rationality’s implication for ethics is
that we have a duty to respect this freedom of choice.

From these facts about human nature, the author derives three fundamental premises
or imperatives of applied ethics (Newton, Internet):

- Beneficence. This imperative, central to any profession, holds that the profession-
als must take care of, or look out for the interest of, the client. Beneficence has
several sub-imperatives conjoined in it: first, to do no harm, second, to prevent
harm or protect from harm, and third, to serve the interests or happiness of the
client.
- Respect for persons. The command to respect the autonomy and dignity of the
individuals with whom we deal, to attend to their reasons and honor their self-
regarding choices, is the command underlying all of our interpersonal dealings. In
professional relationships, however, it also limits the boundaries of professional
beneficence. The professional’s expertise may tell him that the client’s best interests
will be served by certain services that the professional is able to provide; it may
even tell him that the client needs, on pain of loss of life or liberty, certain of his
services. But if the client chooses not to avail himself of them, and only his own
interests are concerned, the professional may not impose those services on the cli-
ent.
- Justice. This imperative demands that the professional look past both art and cli-
ent, and take responsibility for the effect of professional practice in the society as a
whole. In every profession or practice, we can find examples of injustice. For exam-
ple, in medicine, the rich get immediate and adequate care and the poor get late
and inadequate care. The demand of justice upon the professionals is that they
work within their professional associations, and in their individual practices, to
blunt the effects of injustice in their fields. The professional who ignores this de-
mand fails to fulfil all the duties of professional status.

Because these imperatives are logically independent, they can be (and often are) in
conflict. Yet, as Newton says, we may not abolish one or another; we cannot even pri-
oritize them, which leads her to conclude that applied ethics is not the science of easy
answers. As professionals are struggling to solve moral and ethical dilemmas, the en-
gage in the process of moral reasoning. There are different forms of moral reasoning
(Newton, Internet): the first is consequentialist (or utilitarian or teleological) reasoning,
in which ends are identified as good (i.e. values) and means are selected that will lead
to those ends; the second is non-consequentialist (or deontological) reasoning, in which
rules are accepted as good and acts are judged right or otherwise according to their
conformity to those rules; finally. The third is virtue-based (or ontological) reasoning, in
which the type of person one is (i.e., his character), and the type of moral community
one belongs to, determines the obligations to act.

The described core of applied ethics does not specify, for each profession, how the im-
peratives should reflect in the professional practice, and what are the values and vir-
tues of that particular profession. These should differ depending on the function of the
profession in the community. That is why we need branches of applied ethics, tailored
to individual professions. So, let us take a look at police ethics.

POLICE ETHICS

Police ethics applies the above-described principles to the field of policing. Compared
to medical or business ethics, police ethics is relatively underdeveloped. There are sev-
eral reasons for this, the major ones being the paramilitary philosophy of policing and
misunderstanding of the need for police ethics (Pagon, 2000).
First, within the paramilitary philosophy of policing, police officers are assigned the
role of executors of orders from their supervisors. They are not supposed to question
those orders, so there is not much need for moral deliberations. The basic virtue of
police officers within this framework is obedience. Police leadership, on the other hand,
is either not accountable to anyone (since they are setting their own goals and can
always tailor the statistics to fit their needs) or they are accountable only to the party
in power, with which they are in a symbiotic relationship. It is not surprising that police
ethics does not thrive in such a context.

Second, some practitioners are misled by a belief that as far as police officers perform
their work strictly by the law, they need no police ethics. Proponents of this view also
deny police officers the right of discretion. Unfortunately, when one is faced with a
moral or ethical dilemma, the laws prove themselves to be of little use. As Newton
(Internet) puts it, “our first job…in all fields of practice, is to distinguish, in every con-
text, between the demands of law and the demands of ethics - between the danger the
danger of being sued, prosecuted, jailed or defrocked, and the much subtler, but more
pervasive danger of being systematically and cruelly wrong. One of our first lessons
was that we must think beyond the law and teach nervous professionals to do the
same.”

With the rise of the new philosophy of policing (i.e. community policing and problem-
oriented policing) and with the acceptance of police discretion as a necessary part of
police work, the importance of police ethics is gaining acceptance. Nowadays it is hard
to find a curriculum at a police academy or a program in police studies at a university
that does not include a subject of police ethics. At the same time, the number of police
agencies with a department, task force, or a committee on police ethics is rapidly in-
creasing. The majority of police agencies also have adopted a code of police ethics, in a
more or less articulated form.

But, as I have already mentioned, police ethics is still at the beginning of its develop-
ment. A lot of courses on ‘police ethics’ are mainly dealing with philosophical ethics,
while the word ‘police’ in the name simply means that police officers or studies of police
studies are the target group of the course. Therefore, I will outline the direction of the
future development of police ethics.
Following the postulates of applied ethics, the described development should be
achieved by the joint efforts of police scholars (i.e., theoreticians) and police practition-
ers. This development should take place in three interrelated directions (Pagon, 2000):
(a) applying the principles of applied ethics to police profession; (b) establishing stand-
ards of ethical conduct in policing; and (c) defining the means and content of education
and training in police ethics. This development, of course, has to parallel other efforts
for implementing contemporary philosophy and forms of policing and for professional-
ization of police work, including the increased educational requirements for the police.
Let us now take a brief look at the proposed directions for the development of police
ethics.

a) Applying the principles of applied ethics to police profession

The above-described principles of applied ethics have to be tailored to the needs of

police profession, based on the nature of police work and the function of the police in
society. There are three main tasks to be achieved in this context.

First, the basic imperatives (i.e., beneficence, respect for persons, justice) have to be
‘translated’ to police language and specified. What does beneficence mean in dealing
with people who committed crimes or misdemeanors? What does it mean in dealing
with victims and other persons who suffered a loss? Who is ‘the client’ of police work?
Individuals? The community? The state? What exactly does respect for persons mean
in carrying out the police duties? How does the imperative of justice reflect in applying
police discretion? Also, the most common conflicts among basic imperatives in policing
have to be identified, so we could discuss them and prepare some guidelines.

Second, the core values of policing need to be specified. Policing, as any other rational
activity, is directed toward achievement of a certain state or goals. These desired states
and goals represent values. Not only every society has a somewhat different system of
values, they may also differ for each individual. Police ethics has to specify and rank
the impost important values of policing, which will then guide the police officers’ tele-
ological moral reasoning. Such ranking would not imply that other values are not im-
portant; it would just add clarity in ethical decision-making in policing. For example,
let us say that a police officer, using teleological reasoning, determines that one par-
ticular course of action would lead to increased wealth of a certain individual, while
the different course of action would lead to increased equality of the people involved.
Although both the wealth and equality are values, a hierarchy of values would enable
the police officer to opt for equality. While the choice is obvious in this example, how
about a choice between freedom and safety? Respect for human rights and health?

Third, police ethics need to specify the core virtues of policing. While there are com-
monly accepted virtues such as temperance, courage, prudence, justice, charity, kind-
ness, patience, forgiveness, modesty, etc. we have to - just like in every other profession
- decide which virtues are the most important for police officers, based on the function
of the police in society. In doing so, we have to accommodate the above-described
changes in philosophy of policing, which caused some ‘traditional’ police virtues (such
as obedience, uncritical loyalty, authoritativeness) to become obsolete. In police litera-
ture, we can find some descriptions of police virtues, which can serve as a good starting
point. Vicchio (1997) believes that if the goals of police organization are to be met, the
following virtues must be required of police officers: prudence, trust, effacement of self-
interest, courage, intellectual honesty, justice and being cognizant of other alternatives
that might be taken. Delattre (1996) describes the importance of the following virtues
for police officers: honesty, trustworthiness, justice, fairness, compassion, temperance,
courage, wisdom and integrity.

b) Establishing standards of ethical conduct in policing

Expectations regarding ethical conduct have the greatest impact upon actual behavior
if they are not simply assumed, but clearly and unambiguously communicated. Based
on the imperatives, values, and virtues of policy profession, police ethics has to estab-
lish clear and unambiguous standards of ethical conduct in policing. A code of police
ethics is very important within this context. It contains a set of clear, specific state-
ments, expressing in unambiguous terms the moral principles and the kind of conduct
that police profession demands of its members. The code has to be a product of inter-
action between police ethicists and practitioners, based on agreed-upon definitions of
police imperatives, values and virtues. While the research shows that the mere exist-
ence of the code of ethics positively influences employees’ ethical behavior (Ruch &
Crawford, 1991), the police management has to devote a lot of attention to the imple-
mentation of this code.

c) Defining the means and content of education and training in police ethics

Defining the means and content of education and training in police ethics is also a task
that has to be accomplished by a joint effort of police ethicists and practitioners. We
have to keep in mind that listening to one lecture on police ethics or skimming through
some literature on the topic will not make police officers moral nor their behavior eth-
ical. A lot of time and effort need to be put into education and training in police ethics,
before police officers – when faced with a moral problem, ethical or moral dilemma –
will automatically consider all the alternatives available to them; will not make deci-
sions based on prejudice or impulsively; will submit their decisions to reason and
change them, if such a change seems reasonable; and will give equal consideration to
the rights, interests, and choices of all parties to the situation in question.

Furthermore, as Delattre (1996) points out, even the mastery of the process of moral
reasoning and decision-making does not, by itself, guarantee ethical conduct, nor do
all of the situations require moral reasoning and deliberation. An individual has to have
good character (i.e., appropriate virtues) to be motivated for ethical behavior. This re-
alization makes two additional requirements for police ethics training. First, in addition
to teaching moral reasoning and decision-making, training has to emphasize and de-
velop virtues characteristic of police profession. Second, the task of ethical training
should also be the development of moral habits, so the police officers would behave
ethically out of habit in all those situations, which do not present a moral problem,
ethical or moral dilemma, so they do not require moral deliberation and reasoning.

So, the task of police ethics education is to teach the principles of applied ethics in
general and police ethics in particular. It has to cover the imperatives, values and vir-
tues of policing, the process of moral reasoning and decision-making, moral problems,
and in policing, the code of police ethics, and the process of code implementation. Vital
topics are also strategies for managing ethical behavior in police organization and eth-
ics training and education.

The tasks of police ethics training are: (a) enable the students to recognize moral prob-
lems and moral or ethical dilemmas; (b) train the students for the process of moral
reasoning and decision-making; (c) emphasize and develop the virtues necessary for
police profession, hence developing the students’ moral character; (d) develop moral
habits of the students.

The development of police ethics, including education and training, will not achieve its
purpose, unless all organizational processes, especially the behavior of police managers
and the top management of the organization, support and encourage ethical conduct
of all the members.

ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT CONDUCIVE TO POLICE ETHICS

If police officers experience inconsistent behavior from their supervisors, preferential

treatment of some officers and/or citizens, solidarity with, and cover-ups for, the offic-
ers who violate standards of their profession, they will sooner or later become cynical
regarding the value and appropriateness of ethical conduct in their organization. One
cannot expect a cynical police officer to be motivated to adhere to the rules of ethical
behavior (Pagon, 1993).

The research showed the importance of moral climate in organization for the behavior
of individual members. Experiments revealed, in schools and prisons, that changing
organizational processes, such as policies and procedures, could create a positive
moral atmosphere that then contributed to improvements in individual moral develop-
ment and moral judgment, as well as to reduction in cheating, stealing and similar
anti-social acts (Kohlberg, 1984). Investigations of organizational effects on moral con-
duct in business firms appear to support these observations. Firms demonstrating ex-
emplary business practice attest to the value of creating a positive moral atmosphere
for encouraging ethical behavior and maintaining the firm’s reputation. Conversely, the
organizational environment can also promote unethical and criminal conduct in busi-
ness firms (Cohen, 1995). Researchers have also demonstrated that organizational fac-
tors, such as reward systems, norms and culture, and codes of conduct can signifi-
cantly decrease the prevalence of unethical behavior in organizational contexts (Brass,
Butterfield, & Skaggs, 1998).
Cohen (1995) defines moral climate as shared perceptions of prevailing organizational
norms for addressing issues with a moral component. These issues include (a) identi-
fying moral problems, (b) choosing criteria for resolving moral conflicts, and (c) evalu-
ating the moral correctness of outcomes that ensue from organizational decisions.
Since climate is a function of how employees collectively perceive and interpret these
and other elements of the work setting, climate can be thought of as an intervening
variable. As such it provides the necessary perceptual link between organizational pro-
cesses and employee behavior. According to the author, there are five dimensions that
interact to determine the moral climate in the organization: goal emphasis (prevailing
norms for selecting organization goals), means emphasis (prevailing norms for deter-
mining how organizational goals should be attained), reward orientation (prevailing
norms regarding how performance is rewarded), task support (prevailing norms regard-
ing how resources are located to perform specific tasks). And socio-emotional support
(prevailing norms regarding the type of relationships expected in the firm).

It becomes obvious that police supervisors and top management are responsible creat-
ing a positive moral climate within the police. The literature on corporate strategy, or-
ganizational transformation, business ethics and corporate social contract provides
support for a claim that moral climate in the organization emerges mainly from the way
in which key organizational processes transmit managerial expectations about moral
behavior – the way employees should handle issues such as responsibility, equity, or
serving the interests of stakeholders (Cohen, 1995). Therefore, police managers’ expec-
tations about moral behavior of their subordinates will significantly influence moral
climate of a particular police organization or agency.

In the context of discussing ethical behavior in police organization, we should also

stress the importance of social relationships within the organization. Organizational
actors are embedded within a network of relationships. These ongoing social relation-
ships provide the constraints and opportunities that in combination with characteris-
tics of individuals, issues, and organizations, may help explain ethical or unethical
behavior in organizations (Brass, Butterfield & Skaggs, 1998).

Social network researchers bring to our attention several factors that might influence
ethical or unethical behavior of organizational members, such as strength of relation-
ships (in terms of frequency, reciprocity, emotional intensity, and intimacy); negative
relationships; multiplicity of relationships; asymmetric relationships; status inequality;
structure of relationships; structural holes; centrality; density; cliques social contagion;
and conspiracies. The constraints and opportunities provided by relationships may be
most predictive of unethical behavior when personal characteristics, issues, and or-
ganizational factors present moderate or weak constraints or unethical behavior (Brass,
Butterfield, & Skaggs, 1998).

Another important issue that influences ethical behavior is trust among organizational
members. McAllister (1955) distinguishes two main dimensions of trust: (a) cognition-
based trust, which relies on appraisals of others’ professional competence and reliabil-
ity; (b) affect or emotion-based trust, which is present when people feel save to share
their private feelings and personal difficulties, knowing that the other party would re-
spond constructively and caringly. Emotion-based trust has been found to be more
essential to effective coordination efforts in organizations. This emotion-based trust
incorporates the virtue of benevolence, which refers to an altruistic concern for the
welfare of others and is devoid of egocentric motives (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman,
(1995).

In police settings, we could extend this notion of trust to include trust between the
police and the community.
It is important to note that all of the above-described factors interact with each other
in predicting ethical or unethical behaviors. Let us take trust as an example. In an
organization with strong moral climate, composed of individuals of good character, and
with dense social networks, it is safe to assume that high level of trust will promote
ethical behavior. In such organizations, people who trust others (both cognitively and
emotionally) and feel trusted by them will be reluctant to violate this trust by engaging
in unethical behavior. On the other hand, if the moral climate is low, social networks
are loose, with a lot of structural holes and many cliques, it is very likely that high level
of trust within a deviant clique will promote unethical behavior. In this case, people
who trust other clique members and feel trusted by them will be reluctant to violate
this trust by giving up their own unethical behavior or even by reporting on other mem-
bers’ unethical behavior.

Therefore, to set a climate conducive to ethical behavior in police organization, police

managers have to consider all of the above factors. To summarize, they have to foster
character development and moral habits of police officers by educating and training
them in police ethics; establish high moral climate through appropriate use of goals,
means, rewards, and support, facilitate development of strong and dense social net-
works, extending into the community; prevent cliques and conspiracies; and establish
both cognitive- based and affect-based trust among all organizational members and
between the police and the public.

In doing so, the managers will not only facilitate ethical behavior of their officers; they
will also prevent or at least lessen the strength of the infamous police subculture, so
typical of paramilitary policing. In trying to achieve the above goals, police managers
will soon discover that, first, setting their own example is of the utmost importance,
and second, that ethics does not only apply to police officers’ dealings with the com-
munity, but also to their own dealings with their subordinates. Police officers’ human
rights are as important as those of the other citizens.

I agree with Sykes (1993) that the quality of policing in a democratic society relies on
the quality of the people doing the work. This is why I believe that in policing we should
strive to achieve a virtue of integrity of all police officers and supervisors, including top
management.

INTEGRITY

Leadership theorists and researchers have found that integrity is a central trait of ef-
fective business leaders, while interpersonal and group relationship theorists have
identified integrity as a central determinant of trust in organizations (Becker, 1998).
Delattre (1996) and Vecchio (1997) agree that integrity is also central to the mission of
policing. To Delattre, integrity is not only the highest achievement there can be in a
human life, but also the most difficult. So what exactly is integrity?

Delattre (1996) defines as “the settled disposition, the resolve and determination, the
established habit of doing right where there is no one to make you do it but yourself”
(p.325). He believes that integrity is “irreplaceable as the foundation of good friendship,
good marriages, good parenthood, good sportsmanship, good citizenship, and good
public service” (ibid).

Vecchio (1997) defines a person of integrity as somebody who has reasonably coherent
and relatively stable set of core moral values and virtues, to which he is freely and
genuinely committed, and which reflect in his act and speech. So, the person’s words
and actions should be of one piece.

Becker (1998) subscribes to the objectivist view of integrity, namely that integrity is
loyalty, in action, to rational principles (general truths) and values. “That is, integrity
is the principle of being principled, practicing what one preaches regardless of emo-
tional or social pressure, and not allowing any irrational consideration to overwhelm
one’s rational convictions” (p.158).

Integrity in policing, then, means that a police officer genuinely accepts values and
moral standards of policing and possesses the virtues of his profession, and that he
consistently acts, out of his own will, in accordance with those values, standards, and
virtues, even in the face of external pressures.

Of course, not all police officers have integrity. Benjamin (1990) describes five psycho-
logical types lacking in integrity. The first is the moral chameleon, a person who is
anxious to accommodate others, while not being resistant to social pressure, thus will-
ing to quickly abandon or modify previously avowed principles. The second is the moral
opportunist, whose values are also ever changing, based on his own short-term self-
interest. The third type is the moral hypocrite, a person who has one set of virtues for
public consumption and another set for actual use as a moral code. The fourth is the
morally weak-willed who has a reasonably coherent set of core virtues, but he usually
lacks the courage to act on them. The final type is the moral self-deceiver, a person
who thinks of himself as acting on a set of core principles, while, in fact, he does not.

Of course, “it is not a breach of integrity, but a moral obligation, to change one’s views
if one finds that some idea he holds is wrong. It is a breach of integrity to know that
one is right and then proceed (usually with the help of some rationalization) to defy the
right in practice. (Peikoff, 1991): cited in Becker, 1998).

Why do some people lack integrity? Why is it so hard to achieve it? Based on a review
of objectivist literature, Backer (1998) offers the three most common reasons. First, not
everyone is rational. Integrity requires the discipline of purpose and a long-range
course of action, selecting corresponding goals and pursuing them fervently, carefully
choosing the means to one’s ends, and making full use of one’s knowledge. Second, a
person may lack integrity because of desires that are inconsistent with moral values.
If a person, when under temptation, fails to call upon his rational mind, acting upon a
whim of the moment instead, he will indeed lack integrity. The same is true when an
irrational fear drives behavior. Similarly, an individual’s integrity will be called into
question if he does not put rational principles into practice simply out of inertia. Third,
probably the most common reason a person may lack integrity is that he succumbs to
social pressure. Social pressure may come from numerous sources (e.g., co-workers,
bosses, or clients) and take many forms (e.g., physical intimidation or verbal and non-
verbal disapproval). A person with high integrity will not allow popularity to take prior-
ity over rational convictions.

CONCLUSION

From the above discussion, it should be obvious that integrity can only be achieved if
a person strives to achieve it. Appropriate education and training in police ethics, good
moral climate in police organization, appropriate social networks (both within the or-
ganization and within the community), trust and support, can all both motivate police
officers to strive for integrity and help them achieve it. I believe that, once achieved,
integrity of police officers is one of the most important steps toward professionalization
of policing, and one of the most powerful antidotes to police corruption, brutality, ne-
glect of human rights, and other forms of police deviance.

Police ethics provides a compass to both police officers and police managers, by speci-
fying the core imperatives, values, and virtues of policing, by delineating the process of
moral reasoning and decision-making, by setting the standards of ethical conduct, and
by defining the means and the content of police ethics education and training. Police
scholars and practitioners have to cooperate in developing police ethics. This is not an
easy task for either of them. Developing and implementing police ethics invokes
changes in police organization. Police organizations and police officers, as we know,
are very resistant to change. Those police scholars and practitioners entrusted with
developing police ethics must, therefore, themselves be persons of high integrity. We
should not forget the Newton’s (Internet) caution of flattery. The flatterer is a person
who tells people what they want to hear, instead of what they should hear. Flattery, in
Newton’s words, “is the major corruption available to the ethicist…the only defense
against flattery is personal integrity.” In developing and implementing police ethics, a
lot of people will have to be told the things they most definitely do not want to hear.

LITERATURE
Becker, T. E. (1998). Integrity in organizations: Beyond honesty and conscientiousness.
Academy of Management Review, 23(1), 154-161.
Benjamin, M. (1990). Splitting the Difference: Compromise and Integrity in Ethics and Politics.
Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Brass, T. J., Butterfield, K. D., & Skaggs, B. C. (1998). Relationships and unethical behavior:
Social network perspective. Academy of Management Review, 23(1), 14-31.
Cohen, D. V. (1995). Moral climate in business firms: Framework for empirical research.
Academy of Management Journal, Special Issue: Best Paper Proceedings, 386-390.
Delattre, E. J. (1996). Character and Cops: Ethics in Policing (third edition). Washington, D.C.:
The AEI Press.
Fry, L. W. & Berkes, L. J. (1983). The paramilitary police model: An organizational misfit.
Human Organization, 42(3), 225-234.
Hahn, P. H. (1998). Emerging Criminal Justice: Three Pillars for a Proactive Justice System.
Thousand Oaks: Sage Publication.
Kohlberg, L. (1984). The psychology of moral development: Moral stages and the life cycle,
Volume 2. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An interactive model of organizational
trust. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709-734.
McAllister, D. J. (1995). Affect-based and cognition-based trust as foundations for interper-
sonal cooperation in organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 24-59.
Murphy, P. V. (1996). Foreword. V: Delattre, E. J. Character and Cops: Ethics in Policing
(third edition). Washington, D.C.: The AEI Press, str. xiii-xvi.
Newton, L. H. Doing Good and Avoiding Evil: Principles and Reasoning of Applied Ethics.
Program in Applied Ethics, Fairfield University. Internet: http://funrsc.fair-
field.edu/~cnaser/dgea/good-evil.html.
Pagon, M. (1993). Policijski cinizem: vzroki, značilnosti in posledice. Revija Policija, 13(4-5),
389-403.
Pagon, M. (1998). Organizational, managerial, and human resource aspects of policing at a
turn of the century. In: Pagon, M. (Ed.). Policing in Central and Eastern Europe: Organ-
izational, Managerial, and Human Resource Aspects. Ljubljana: College of Police and
Security Studies, 3-14.
Pagon, M. (2000). Policijska etika kot zvrst uporabne etike. Varstvoslovje, 2(2), 158-167.
Rutch, W. V. & Crawford, M. L. (1991). Business Communication. New York: McMillan.
Sykes, G. W. (1993). Why Police Ethics? Law Enforcement Ethics Center, Southwestern Law
Enforcement Institute. Internet: http://web2.airmail.net/slf/oct93/why.html.
Vicchio, S. J. (1997). Ethics and Police Integrity. Law Enforcement Bulletin, Internet:
http://www.fbi.gov/leb/july972.htm.
 Milan Pagon – Biography
Milan Pagon got his doctorate (Sc.D.) in Organizational Sciences in 1990 at the University of Maribor,
Slovenia. In the period between 1990 and 1994, he was a Fulbright Scholar to the University of
Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he both studied and taught at the College of Business Administration.
In 1994, he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in Management/Organizational Be-
havior.
During his police career, Dr. Pagon was Educator at the Police High School, Detective, Deputy
Commander and Commander of Police Station, Police Inspector, and State Undersecretary at the
Ministry of the Interior. Outside the police, he was Assistant Director of the Personnel Agency of
Slovenia, Human Resource Manager at a chemical company, Teaching Assistant, Assistant Professor,
and Associate Professor. In 1995, he was elected Dean of the College of Police and Security Studies,
a duty that he initially performed for three years. In 2001, he was again elected Dean, the position
that he is currently holding. In 2003, Dr. Pagon was elected to the rank of Full Professor. In addition
to his administrative and teaching duties at the College of Police and Security Studies, he is also
Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Maribor.
Dr. Pagon was invited in the summers of 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999 to serve as Visiting Profes-
sor at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he taught Concepts of Management and Organ-
izational Behavior and Human Resource Management at the Sam M. Walton College of Business.
Dr. Pagon is a member of the following professional and scientific associations: Academy of Man-
agement, Honorary Management Fraternity Sigma Iota Epsilon, International Society for Human Re-
source Management, Society of International Scholars Phi Beta Delta, American Psychological Society,
American Society for Criminology, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, American Association of
University Professors, International Police Association, and Association of Professors of the University
of Maribor.
He was a founding father and the Chairman of the Program Committee of the International Bien-
nial Conference Policing in Central and Eastern Europe, which was already organized four times, with
the following subtitles:
- Comparing Firsthand Knowledge with Experience from the West (1996),
- Organizational, Managerial, and Human Resource Aspects (1998),
- Ethics, Integrity, and Human Rights (2000) and
- Deviance, Violence, and Victimization (2002).
In his research, Dr. Pagon has collaborated with some of the top international researchers in the
fields of management and police work: Dr. Daniel C. Ganster, Dr. Paul E. Spector and Dr. Carl B.
Klockars from the USA and Dr. Cary L. Cooper from the UK. These cooperation efforts have already
produced papers at scientific conferences and publications in the best international journals.
Dr. Pagon was also appointed to the editorial board of two international and one domestic journal,
namely the Stress& Health, the International Journal of Police Science and Management, and
Varstvoslovje - Journal of Security Theory and Praxeology.
He also serves as a reviewer for one international and two domestic journals, namely the Stress
& Health, Varstvoslovje, and the Organization – Journal of Management, Informatics, and Human
Resources.

View publication stats