Academic Integrity Students the Importance of Academic

Academic Integrity Students

The importance of academic integrity for students in the criminal justice and security field can not be emphasized enough. Those who are today's students are the criminal justice and security professionals of the future. This short essay will briefly examine issues relating to honesty and integrity in criminal justice and security in the fields of government agencies, corrections, law enforcement, courts or private security. We will present three specific examples that emphasize the need for academic integrity by students going into the criminal justice and security field.

There has never been more of a need from integrity among those in the criminal justice and security field. One example of how important this is can be seen in the lack of effectiveness that the criminal justice and security field has been in dealing with issues of "power crime," that is, by white collar criminals high in the justice and security establishment. In an article published in the Crime Law and Social Change, Vincenzo Ruggiero and Michael Welch delve in the theory of power crime that represents compromises in security integrity. The authors point out that a factor that overhangs subject is the presence of immunity which can undermine effective strategies for the detection, prosecution and punishment for those engaged in such abuses is the way that the crime gets naturalized. It becomes so much a part of the landscape that those who engage in it really feel that they have done is not wrong. Indeed, it is a part of the organizational culture of government, security or big business (Ruggiero & Welch, 2008, 297).

The examples that the authors use the powerful government official who does what they do with impunity such as the atrocities committed by U.S. military and intelligence officers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib

prison in Iraq. This involved organizational culture and impunity, implying something deeper than financial gain. Such crimes are those of power and are done because they can be and are many times not punished Another blatant example is Blackwater Security a private military firm which has engaged in reckless violence against

Iraqi civilians in the name of security. All of these crimes occurred in an atmosphere of organizational culture and security that was an inevitable result of the war on terror. Certainly, these people had no expectation of getting caught, let alone prosecuted. Certainly, when they are faced with the variety and harmfulness of crimes committed by powerful people, students may be led to question their traditional theories that associate criminal conduct with simple marginalization, poverty or material and cultural exclusion.

On the contrary, the types of misconduct addressed by the authors points to a culture of political, economic and symbolic hegemony that in turn produce an array of crimes that are the result of and perpetuate power itself (ibid., 297-299).

Certainly, students and scholars alike may ask if it is possible to predict such behavior in candidates for the criminal justice and security field. This particular question was raised in a study published in the journal of Criminal Justice and Behavior

that examined the validity of test scores on pre-hire administration of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

(MMPI-2) Clinical, Restructured Clinical (RC), and Substance Abuse scales in predicting behavioral misconduct in police officers.

The predictive validity was moderate to strong when there were disattenuating correlations for range restriction.

The relative risk analyses revealed that the lower cutoffs for MMPI-2 scales maximized the prediction of police officer misconduct.

This was particularly the case in small police departments as shown in a thirteen month longitudinal study that was a part of the article's consideration. In this, the Aggressiveness Index was significantly correlated with the accurate prediction of disciplinary suspension days for 107 police officers after 3 years on the job.

This example then would indicate that the MMPI-2 was an accurate indicator of how a potential candidate would perform in terms of integrity while on the job (Sellbom, Fischler & Ben-Porath, 2007, 985-987).

The scores actually would be much higher if two other factors are also taken into account: preselection and selection factors. The factor of preselection refers to the factors that restrict the range of scores in the sample of candidates (e.g., civil service exams, stable work history) in that the individuals with significant psychological problems do not apply to become police officers or are screened out early in selection. The selection factors involve the psychologists' reliance on the cutoff scores on the MMPI-2 to screen out potentially problematic individuals who are therefore never hired. Both of the above selection factors lead to two problems: range restriction and the occurrence of elevated scores.

Preselection and selection factors restrict the variance in both MMPI-2 scores and problematic outcomes in the police officers in that most individuals likely to engage in problematic behaviors are already screened out. As a result, the correlations between MMPI-2 scores and criterion variables will be attenuated and, unless corrected, provide an underestimate of the predictive validity of MMPI-2 scores.

This then will show that the MMPI-2 test is an accurate indicator of a potential officer candidates ethical performance on the job (ibid., 988-989).

A final example of the importance of honesty and integrity that students in the criminal justice and security field should take note of are surveys of already serving officers. This is a different approach than screening out candidates in beginning. That is an administrative exercise that has been roundly criticized for limitations, particularly when one considers that officers who are otherwise moral and upstanding are reluctant to report on colleagues who are not. A National Institute of Justice Study measured the problem with an organizational/occupational approach to police corruption when it polled existing officers in 30

police agencies across the United States.