IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aap/wpaper/105.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Guarding the Guardians: An Analysis of Investigations against Police

Author

Listed:
  • Sandro Cabral
  • Sérgio G. Lazzarini

Abstract

Internal affairs divisions are organizations crafted to monitor the behavior of police officers. However, like many other public bureaucracies, the police is plagued with the “who guards the guardians” dilemma, which is a typical organizational design problem that occurs when the agents to be monitored are appointed as monitors. Consequently, there are reasons to believe that investigations will be inherently biased towards of certain police officers and certain types of deviations. In this paper we examine reasons why some complaints against police officers are sustained or not and if these complaints foster or not consequential sanctions. We employ a distinct dataset containing detailed information on investigation processes against police officers performed by the internal affairs division of a police organization in Brazil. We find that while certain organizational procedures adopted by the internal affairs division increase the speed in which the investigation is concluded, certain officer-specific characteristics (such as the status and tenure of the officer) and the nature of the accusation significantly affect the final verdict, thus suggesting potential bias in the overall process.

Suggested Citation

  • Sandro Cabral & Sérgio G. Lazzarini, 2010. "Guarding the Guardians: An Analysis of Investigations against Police," Business and Economics Working Papers 105, Unidade de Negocios e Economia, Insper.
    • Handle: RePEc:aap:wpaper:105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repositorio.insper.edu.br/handle/11224/5807
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alchian, Armen A & Demsetz, Harold, 1972. "Production , Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 777-795, December.
    2. Terrill, William & McCluskey, John, 2002. "Citizen complaints and problem officers: Examining officer behavior," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 143-155.
    3. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    4. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    5. Licht Amir N., 2008. "Social Norms and the Law: Why Peoples Obey the Law," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(3), pages 715-750, December.
    6. Weitzer, Ronald, 2002. "Incidents of police misconduct and public opinion," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 397-408.
    7. Carter, David L., 1990. "Drug-related corruption of police officers: A contemporary typology," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 85-98.
    8. Mehmet Bac, 2001. "Corruption, Connections and Transparency: Does a Better Screen Imply a Better Scene?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 107(1), pages 87-96, April.
    9. McElvain, James P. & Kposowa, Augustine J., 2004. "Police officer characteristics and internal affairs investigations for use of force allegations," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 265-279.
    10. Donohue, John J, III & Levitt, Steven D, 2001. "The Impact of Race on Policing and Arrests," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(2), pages 367-394, October.
    11. George J. Stigler, 1971. "The Theory of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 2(1), pages 3-21, Spring.
    12. De Angelis, Joseph & Kupchik, Aaron, 2009. "Ethnicity, trust, and acceptance of authority among police officers," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 273-279, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cabral, Sandro & Lazzarini, Sérgio G., 2010. "Guarding the Guardians: An Analysis of Investigations against Police," Insper Working Papers wpe_202, Insper Working Paper, Insper Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa.
    2. Ray Ball, 2009. "Market and Political/Regulatory Perspectives on the Recent Accounting Scandals," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(2), pages 277-323, May.
    3. Fuxiu Jiang & Kenneth A. Kim & Yunbiao Ma & John R. Nofsinger & Beibei Shi, 2019. "Corporate Culture and Investment–Cash Flow Sensitivity," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 154(2), pages 425-439, January.
    4. Deng, Xin & Kang, Jun-koo & Low, Buen Sin, 2013. "Corporate social responsibility and stakeholder value maximization: Evidence from mergers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(1), pages 87-109.
    5. Filippo Belloc, 2014. "Innovation in State-Owned Enterprises: Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdom," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(3), pages 821-848.
    6. Harley E. Ryan & Emery A. Trahan, 2007. "Corporate Financial Control Mechanisms and Firm Performance: The Case of Value‐Based Management Systems," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(1‐2), pages 111-138, January.
    7. Christos Pitelis, 2013. "Towards a More ‘Ethically Correct’ Governance for Economic Sustainability," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 118(3), pages 655-665, December.
    8. Han Jiang & Albert A. Cannella & Jie Jiao, 2018. "Does Desperation Breed Deceiver? A Behavioral Model of New Venture Opportunism," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 42(5), pages 769-796, September.
    9. Kamath Shyam J., 1994. "Privatization: A Market Prospect Perspective," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 53-104, March.
    10. Grimm Noh & Dongyoub Shin, 2018. "The different influences of the government and politicians on the international expansion of Chinese firms," Asian Business & Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 17(5), pages 366-396, December.
    11. Thomas J. Chemmanur & Dimitrios Gounopoulos & Panagiotis Koutroumpis & Yu Zhang, 2022. "CSR and Firm Survival: Evidence from the Climate and Pandemic Crises," Working Papers 935, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    12. César Camisón & José Antonio Clemente & Sergio Camisón-Haba, 2022. "Asset tangibility, information asymmetries and intangibles as determinants of family firms leverage," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 16(7), pages 2047-2082, October.
    13. Klaus Heine, 2013. "Inside the black box: incentive regulation and incentive channeling on energy markets," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 17(1), pages 157-186, February.
    14. Goh, Lisa & Liu, Xuejiao & Tsang, Albert, 2020. "Voluntary disclosure of corporate political spending," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    15. Sami Adwan & M. Mostak Ahamed, 2025. "Employee ownership and corporate investment efficiency in Europe," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 64(1), pages 191-236, January.
    16. Barg, Johannes A. & Drobetz, Wolfgang & El Ghoul, Sadok & Guedhami, Omrane & Schröder, Henning, 2024. "Institutional dual ownership and voluntary greenhouse gas emission disclosure," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    17. Ranjani Krishnan & Deepa Mani, 2020. "Uncertainty and Compensation Design in Strategic Interfirm Contracts†," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(1), pages 542-574, March.
    18. Ichev, Riste & Valentinčič, Aljoša, 2025. "The effect of impact investing on performance of private firms," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(PA).
    19. Fabrizio Rossi & Maretno Agus Harjoto, 2020. "Corporate non-financial disclosure, firm value, risk, and agency costs: evidence from Italian listed companies," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 14(5), pages 1149-1181, October.
    20. Boubakri, Narjess & Ghouma, Hatem, 2010. "Control/ownership structure, creditor rights protection, and the cost of debt financing: International evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2481-2499, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aap:wpaper:105. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Biblioteca Telles (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inspebr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.