Date of Conferral

2023

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Criminal Justice

Advisor

Dianne Williams

Abstract

Police misconduct has become an issue of concern among law enforcement officers and other stakeholders. Approximately, 10% of law enforcement officers commit 90% of misconduct problems, and as high as 45% of the misconduct generates citizen complaints. Thus, there has been an increasing debate on whether police officers should attain a college education or not. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to investigate the relationship between education level and the number of complaints filed against police officers for misconduct. This study was grounded on the cognitive development theory. The study was conducted by following the guidelines proposed by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Four main databases were utilized to search for original research studies published from 1990 up to 2022, and these were Scopus, Science Direct, JSTOR, and Google Scholar. The primary participants/focus for this study were police officers with complaints filed against them as subjects in the research studies to be included in this systematic review. Two data collection instruments were used in this systematic review study, which includes the CASP and another instrument that I developed. The findings of this study indicate that the level of education achieved has an impact on police officers’ misconduct, complaints, attitudes, and use of force. Police officers who have a college education use less force during encounters with citizens, and they performed better compared to non-college educated officers. Based on the important role played by college education, there is a need for all states to include a college education as a requirement for all officers.

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