Exploring the Ability of Pre-employment Screening Measures to Identify Police Officers who Commit Crimes

Incidents of police officers abusing their power and breaking the laws they are sworn to uphold are a longstanding, yet remains a virtually unstudied area of research. The present study explores the utility of two pre-employment selection measures, the MMPI-2 and the M-PULSE, to identify police officers likely to engage in criminal conduct during their careers in law enforcement. Specifically, this study seeks to further the research concerning whether there exists a certain combination of personality traits common among police officers who take advantage of their positions of authority and commit unlawful acts in violation of their duty as police officers to enforce the law. Archival data consisting of the pre-employment MMPI-2 and M-PULSE profiles for 100 police officers who have been charged with a crime and 100 control officers who have no reports of criminal activity was obtained from Matrix, Inc. The data was analyzed using logistic regression to determine whether there are differences in personality traits between officers who have been arrested and those who have not within four years of their initial screening. Results show differences between criminal and non-criminal officers on scales K and CYN from the MMPI-2, and the Criminal Conduct and Poor Emotional Controls scales from the M-PULSE.;Keywords: criminal, law enforcement, MMPI-2, M-PULSE, police, pre-employment assessment...