Fallen Blue Knights: Controlling Police Corruption

by Sanja Kutnjak Ivković

Despite its suspected prevalence, no comprehensive analysis of police corruption has been published for nearly three decades. Fallen Blue Knights provides a systematic, in-depth analysis of the subject, while also addressing the question of what can be done to ensure successful corruption control. Kutnjak Ivkovic argues that the current mechanisms for control--the courts, prosecutors, independent commissions, and the media, as well as the internal control mechanisms within a police agency itself--suffer from severe shortcomings that substantially limit their effectiveness. In this much-needed analysis, Kutnjak Ivkovic redefines the roles of major players and develops a novel, comprehensive model of corruption control.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 2005

Reviews

[Jonathan Blanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is a very good distillation of the many inputs that drive police corruption. However, I'm ultimately unpersuaded by the new oversight agency put forth in the conclusion to rein it in. This is in no small part that there were no substantive discussions of the power of police unions in protecting officers and the role they may play in establishing the new oversight mechanism or their influence in furthering the corrosive cultures that breed widespread corruption.

If given the opportunity, I would grade this book at 3.5 for researchers in police reform, but gave it 4 on the principle of rounding up.