An Experimental Research Study on the Development of Police Vocational School Students' Ethical Perceptions

Abstract

Inappropriate use of legal authority, even misuse of them, will affect the use of citizens’ rights and their life quality adversely. Therefore, behaving according to the values of professional ethics is one way of assuring the implementation of police job in terms of the ideal standards. One of the ways to make the police comply with the professional values is having them educated on ethics. The very first phase on this objective is the training institutions. In recent years, more emphasis has been given to ethics training at schools in Turkey, and hence, all the police cadets are given the ethics training. However, the assessment of students’ perceptions on the ethics training has not been studied so far. In that regard, this empirical study examines from different dimensions the perceptions of the students at a police vocational school (PVS), which is a vital institution for human sources for the Turkish National Police. Furthermore, by using an experimental research design, it explores how the education and socialization processes affect the perceptions of police’ professional ethics. The data were collected through surveys done in three stages of pretest, posttest, and control groups, during a twoyear-period, at a PVS. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson Product Moment Correlation and MANOVA tests in the SPSS 17.0. The findings showed that the education and socialization processes during the two years, have not changed the perceptions of the students about the seriousness of unethical behaviors. Similarly, it is found that the education and socialization processes during the two years have not influenced the police cadets’ perceptions on how frequently unethical behaviors occur in the organization, either. However, after the two-year-process, the students started to perceive the unethical behaviors less serious, except for the behaviors of violations of individual rights. Having similar results from the previous year’s second graders can be explained as, this decrease may be due to the process of two years at the PVS.