CONCEPT AND SYSTEMATIZATION OF POLICE DEVIATIONS

Abstract

Police function, embodied in the implementation and control of compliance with rules of conduct requires from police officers to be representatives of the conformity of a society. It is logical that you can not ask someone to follow the rules if you do not respect them. However, that this rule has an exception proves the presence of different types of deviant behavior of police officers. Police deviations are usually a distinctive theme that draws the attention of experts in various fields, among who sociologists and criminologists certainly excel. This phenomenon also represents a particular challenge for a scientist. Due to the manner of execution, the specific actors and the environment in which these behaviors occur, research of this phenomenon is extremely difficult. The study of this phenomenon suffers from certain conceptual limitations. It is known that a key prerequisite for a scientific research is theoretical and working definition of the research subject. The problem however is the fact that in today's world there is no unique opinion as to what actually police deviances are and what behavior can be subsumed under this concept. Our aspiration is, in this work, to remove at least partially confusions and eventually find out an acceptable solution. In order to attain this goal, we will glimpse the concept of police deviations in the context of several dominant perspectives of deviations and critically analyze some of the existing classification of deviant behavior of police officers.