A complex relation between the code of silence and education

Abstract

This chapter explores the connection between education and the code of silence. Our sample, collected through a police integrity survey conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2017, consists of 1,006 police officers from the Federation, the Republika Srpska, the Brcko District, as well as state police agencies. The respondents evaluated 14 hypothetical scenarios describing various forms of police misconduct and expressed their own willingness to report such misconduct. The results indicate a complex relation between the code of silence and education. On the one hand, is a very weak relation between the code of silence and the line offices’ level of police education. On the other hand, there is a strong effect of the interaction between the type and level of line officers’ police education on the code of silence. At the same time, there is no relation between the supervisors’ willingness to report misconduct and police education.