The purpose of this paper is to examine police cadets’ perceptions of the seriousness of police corruption. This study attempts to explore and delineate a variety of factors that may influence police cadets’ perceptions about some basic types of corruption. A comparison between future supervisors’ and line officers’ perceptions of specific aspects of corruption is lacking. A quantitative research design was used for data collection. The results of this study indicated that there were significant differences in police cadets’ perceptions of the seriousness of corruption based on their parents’ education level, occupation, and income. In addition, the findings revealed that cadets’ sociodemographic background, such as parents’ education level and type of occupation, as well as the cadet’s organizational affiliations, such as their respective police training school, had significant effects on their perceptions of seriousness involving corruption scenarios. This study provided important and useful information for policy-makers and leadership cadres responsible for police training.

In democratic societies, people hand over their right to seek justice to legally established institutions, including law enforcement agencies. For the private citizen, the agencies assume the responsibility of distributing justice and assuring public order. In Understanding Police Use of Force: Officers, Suspects, and Reciprocity, Alpert and Dunham focus on police use and abuse of force. They argue that police use of force should be demystified and analyzed in order to reestablish and strengthen the trust between the institution of law enforcement and the community.Although abuse of force is a rare event, it causes public unrest and raises doubt about the credibility of law enforcement. The authors provide readers with very important arguments that result in increased understanding of police use of force. They meticulously analyze the concept, use of force, and examine definitions varying between police agencies across three distinct periods of police history. These periods are characterized by nonregulation, professionalism, and contemporary practices.One of the major difficulties in understanding use of force results from the lack of adequate data. The authors categorize data sources into three types: (a) official records, representing the police standpoint, (b) researchers' observations, and (c) citizens' complaints and attitudes. They then discuss each source's advantages, shortcomings, and reliabilities in relation to contributing to a better understanding of the use and abuse of force. Besides discussion of these main data sources, factors affecting the interpretation of major surveys about the use of force are analyzed from the standpoint of different parties. Suggestions and measures to improve the response rate, the quality of data, and accurate interpretation are included in the first chapter.Alpert and Dunham's approach is to dismantle and interpret police reports of interactions between police and suspects, to identify patterns of interaction, and to use this information to prevent or at least reduce abuse of force in the future. They bring to their task their own perspectives in analyzing police-suspect interaction in data gathered from the Miami Dade, Florida, and the Prince George's County, Maryland, police departments.Data for the original research described in the book are based on reports prepared by law enforcement officers after their encounters with suspects. Alpert and Dunham acknowledge that there are discrepancies in the accounts of the interactions depending on the standpoints of the parties and on differences between police jurisdictions. They therefore used a new approach to evaluate discrepancies. To reveal the interaction and sequencing of the use of force, they created new data reflecting three versions for each police-suspect encounter. First, the police department's official "control of persons report" served as a benchmark. The second source of information was the suspect's testimonial about his or her interaction with the police. The third was data collected through a telephone i...