Presocialisation and police misconduct: Exploring new tools for predicting officer exposure to misconduct investigations

Police literature in the area of presocialisation for police recruits is sparse, with growing but limited empirical evidence as to its effect upon police performance and conduct. There are studies that measure the influence of police personality within recruitment processes, and subsequent studies that address the potential for misconduct prediction in serving officers, but this has not been developed to a level that justifies widespread operationalisation. This study investigates prior socialisation and motivation before police employment as potential predicting factors in exposure to misconduct investigation. The study represents a survey ( n = 214 ) that was disseminated via social media to retired police officers in the United Kingdom ( n = 94 ) and the United States (US) ( n = 120 ). The participants were asked to disclose their prior socialisation to policing through family or friendship contact, alongside their prior motivations for becoming an officer. These were then compared to examine if that prior socialisation influenced motivation type, and then both sets of variables were compared with self-reported exposure to misconduct procedure by the participants. The results show that gender and the originating country are significantly correlated with exposure to misconduct investigation in both bivariate and univariate analysis. Males are more likely to be exposed to misconduct investigation, and those in the US are also more likely to be exposed to misconduct investigation. Variability of job content and economic motivations approach significance but may require large sampling to explore properly. These results show that aspects of motivation were less influential than geographic location and gender in determining exposure to misconduct investigation, and illuminate several avenues of future research in this area.