Since private investigation (PI) business had been burgeoning first in Chicago in 1850, there had been ongoing argument between the public police and PI; that is whether the public police should cooperate with PI. For example, the Hallcrest report emphasized that cooperation between the two parties was critical for public service (e.g. Cunningham and Taylor, 1985; Gill and Hart, 1997; Kakalik and Wildhorn, 1971; Marx, 1987; Scott and McPherson, 1971; Shearing et al., 1985). But, other studies found that the public police generally maintained negative attitudes toward PI (Gill and Hart, 1999; Kakalik and Wildhorn, 1971; Shearing et al., 1985), resulting in lack of cooperation with PI.
Prior studies have suggested that PI must be utilized by the public police for the following reasons; PI can balance power between prosecutors and defense in adversarial legal system (Alarid and Montemayor, 2010; Frank and Schwartz, 1996), promote self-help among citizens (Becker, 1974; Cunningham and Taylor, 1985; Shearing, 1992), resolve cases that require professional skills, such as financial and insurance investigation (Han and Jung, 2009; Hwang, 2005), help police to achieve “net-widening” of social control (Shearing and Stenning, 1983), and increase efficiency of the public policing (Kim, 2007). Although a small number of studies argued that PI would interfere with police work (e.g. Marling, 1995), most of the prior studies suggested that the public police need to utilize private investigators and that cooperation being essential for better public service (e.g. Cunningham and Taylor, 1985).
Nevertheless, prior empirical studies have not examined a rather practical issue: exactly what factors makes public officers cooperate with private investigators. Although several studies have emphasized that police officers’ attitudes toward PI is important in enhancing cooperation (e.g. Shearing et al., 1985), there has been no empirical endeavor focussing on how public officers’ attitudes toward PI are constructed. Also, most of the prior studies in this field have been conducted in North America and England, and similar research in other countries, particularly in East Asian Countries, is extremely scant. To fill this void in the literature, the current study investigated what factors influence variances in police officers’ attitudes toward PI, resulting in increased tendency to cooperate with private investigators. To accomplish the goal, this study collected data from 377 current police officers from investigative units and non-investigative units in South Korea, and examined a list of factors including demographics, career in policing, attitudes toward policing, cost and benefit ratio in working with PIs, and attitudes toward PI. Based on the findings of analyses, policy implications for public police are suggested.
PI as a business in South Korea has been rapidly growing. From 1980 to 1985, such businesses grew by 55 percent, followed by a 194 percent increase between 1985 and 1990, and a 104 percent increase between 1995 and 2000 (Lee, 2004). This growing policing business originated in so called “errand business” and was first recognized by the law in the 1960s. For example, the 1961 Heungshinso Act (a term for errand businesses operators) first legalized the errand business and regulated what business activities could and could not be carried out. Since then, many Heungshinso businesses have conducted illegal activities, such as collecting debts and using violence to resolve personal civil cases (Na, 2007). In response to public outcry to prohibit such illegal activities, the Korean government enacted the Credit Investigation Act (Act 3039) in 1977, which banned any type of PI activities, resulting in PI becoming illegal in South Korea (Na, 2007). Yet, this Act still allowed a certain portion of errand jobs to remain legal, such as collecting public information (e.g. helping to get governmental documents issued) and delivering mail or packages. These activities were called Shimboorum activities, and companies engaging in these activities were called Shimboorum centers instead of Heungshinsos. However, Shimboorum centers also carry out many different forms of illegitimate investigations, such as collecting private information and eavesdropping during infidelity investigations (Na, 2007)[1].
Recently, some attempt was made to legalize all types of PI activities, except criminal investigation, in South Korea. Legalization of PI will bring significant implications to the public policing. For example, PIs can support and prepare legal documents on behalf of prosecutors and defense attorneys for both criminal and civil cases (Alarid and Montemayor, 2010), and their help for defense attorneys will reduce the imbalance between prosecutors who predominantly maintain evidence (Frank and Schwartz, 1996). Their work in criminal cases can also reduce the police workload and provide valuable services to clients, as a partial alternative to criminal procedures (e.g. An, 2007; Gill and Hart, 1997; Gill et al., 1996a; Lee, 2011). Lee (2011) empirically investigated how many work hours South Korean police could save if they utilized PIs and found that a police officer who utilized a PI could save almost eighteen hours per month in collecting evidence, ten hours in interviewing witnesses, and nine hours in infidelity investigations.
According to Lee’s (2004) study, PI is expected to increase in South Korea. Even though Korean police currently cannot utilize private investigators in carrying out their daily works, private investigators are still hired by individuals and organizations to achieve private justice and outcry for achieving private justice is growing. In addition, the interest of the public police is to maintain the public good while PIs work for their clients’ interests. But when PI is legalized, the public police can utilize PI work forces to accomplish their goal. Furthermore, privatization of policing is welcomed when seen from the current models of policing, e.g. community-oriented policing (Walsh and Donovan, 1989). In this circumstance, utilization of PI and cooperation with PIs need to be encouraged more than they have been previously. In particular, South Korea needs to establish a system in which the public police can utilize work forces of PIs, provided that empirical evidence supports existence of such system.
In South Korea, the theme of co-production of the policing service has received some academic attention for the relationship between the public police and PIs. Since the public police experience limitations in resources and constraints in the legal system, the police cannot provide police services to the entire population in all geographic areas at all times (Choi, 2006; Kim, 2004, 2007). Furthermore, due to the bureaucratic nature and the red tape inherent in public organizations, the South Korean police had been experiencing difficulty in adaption to rapidly changing public requests, e.g. cyber-crime investigations. Thus, scholars in South Korea emphasize that police services should be co-produced by the public police and private police (Kim, 2004, 2007). Co-production of policing is thought to increase the crime-control function due to net-widening effects stemming from more ubiquitous police presence generated by both public and private police (Choi, 2006; Kim, 2004, 2007).
Cooperation between police and PIs seems to be dependent upon police officers’ attitudes toward PI and PIs (Choi, 2006; Cunningham and Taylor, 1985; Kakalik and Wildhorn, 1971; Scott and McPherson, 1971; Shearing et al., 1985). For example, the Rand study on private policing (Kakalik and Wildhorn, 1971) found that, although more than 60 percent of police officers viewed private policing as helpful and valuable due to that they have legal constraints and resource limitations, most police officers did not want private policing personnel get involved in their cases. The study argued that private policing should be utilized as supplementary entities to public policing (Kakalik and Wildhorn, 1971). Similarly, Scott and McPherson (1971) found that PIs maintain a positive attitude toward cooperation with the public police and are willing to carry out supplementary functions for the police, but the public police appear not wanting to work with PIs, and as such, cooperation has been relatively uncommon between the two parties. Furthermore, as a follow-up to the Rand study, the Hallcrest report (Cunningham and Taylor, 1985) specifically suggested that the low levels of cooperation between the two parties were due to resistance from the public police, who were wary of an infringement on their turf by the private police. Considering private policing as an industry which has potentially massive and underutilized resources, Cunningham and Taylor (1985) argued that private policing should be mobilized not only for self-defense and protection, but also for crime fighting. They suggested that, since private policing work is not different from police practice, the private police should be an equal partner instead of being a supplementary or junior partner to the public police.
Prior studies, however, lacked empirical evidence regarding how to enhance the cooperation between the public and private police. Particularly, previous studies did not investigate what factors affect police officers’ decision to cooperate with PIs in either criminal or civil cases. Furthermore, previous studies have not examined what factors were related to positive police attitudes toward PI. To fill the void in the literature, the current study will review factors relevant to police officers’ attitudes toward cooperation with PIs in working their cases utilizing a sample of South Korean police officers.
Factors affecting officers’ cooperation with PIs
Case traits
According to Gill et al.’ (1996a) study, there were three reasons for hiring private investigators: first, PIs maintained confidentiality relatively well compared with the police; second, there was no alternative to hiring a PI; and third, PIs had special skills and equipment. These findings imply that if police officers believe that a case requires special skills and/or equipment (e.g. financial accounting skills in white-collar crimes), then they would be more likely to support working with PIs (see also, Gill and Hart, 1997).
Police officers, however, have been found to be partisan and self-defensive in the sense that they want to maintain a monopoly of criminal investigation. In a similar vein, Shearing and Stenning (1981) found that police officers generally believed that private policing contributes to the prevention of crime and the apprehension of criminals by complementing the public police work, but that PI’s involvement in criminal investigations might cause damage to the legitimacy of the public police. Particularly, they found that the police community did not have a high regard for private security (Shearing and Stenning, 1981), and that private policing might jeopardize delivering justice in an unbiased manner due to its informal and unregulated practices (p. 225).
Furthermore, as Kakalik and Wildhorn (1971) suggested, the public police may not perform proper policing activities when there are resource limitations or legal constraints. Particularly in a high profile case, police may experience obstacles in their investigation, since they are more bound by legal and bureaucratic rules of law enforcement agencies (Clarke, 1996). Thus, needs and desires to use private police on the part of the public police do exist. Yet, since the public police do not hold a high regard for PI, and is the public’s perception toward PI can be negative due to supposedly unorthodox activities by PIs, officers are reluctant to cooperate with PIs in investigating high profile cases.
Officers’ job assignments
There exist several studies indirectly suggesting an association between officers’ job assignments and their attitudes toward PI. In South Korea, An (2007) argued that when officers could have utilized PIs, the police would save their work hours in the preliminary investigation stage, which might subsequently enable them to maximize efficiency by re-arranging investigative units’ resources. Na (2007) also argued that detectives would not have to waste time in investigating trivial issues, such as infidelity cases. Thus, when officers who are assigned to and working in investigative units believe that they could save time by not carrying out trivial investigations, they would be more likely to utilize PIs. However, an opposite argument is also possible that officers, who perceive PI inferior to public policing and who believe that PIs may abuse authority, may be less likely to utilize, or cooperate with PIs. Thus, this study hypothesizes that there is a correlation between officers’ job assignment (investigative vs non-investigative units) and their tendency to cooperate with PIs.
Officers’ rational calculation
As with other human beings, police officers may also utilize the built-in calculus of costs and benefits deciding whether to utilize PI or not. According to Gill and Hart (1997), officers tend to make use of PI if they believe that collecting evidence may pose threats to the due process. Employing the cost-benefit calculus, if police officers believe that utilization of private police can increase the probability of making an arrest, they may cooperate with or at least attempt to use PI. Thus, it is hypothesized that officers’ cost and benefit calculation in utilizing PI will influence their tendency to cooperate with PIs.
Officers’ attitudes
In their study of a sample of American police officers, Scott and McPherson (1971) found that, while most police officers possess positive attitudes toward PIs, none of the officers had favorable attitudes toward a cooperative relationship with PIs. They suggested that the positive attitudes and perceptions were attributed to certain empathy and understanding stemming from the fact that a significant number of PIs were ex-police officers and most current public officers also moonlighted as PIs. Even so, police officers tend not to work with PIs in actual criminal cases due to a number of reasons. The commonly reported reasons include that PIs lack investigative skills (Gill et al., 1996a; Hwang, 2005; Shearing et al., 1985), are financially motivated, and often engage in unlawful and unsanctioned forms of investigations (Gill and Hart, 1997, 1999). Thus, this study will examine the association between individual police officers’ attitudes toward PIs and their tendency to cooperate with PI.
Organizational/cultural contexts for cooperation
Both the Rand and the Hallcrest studies emphasize the importance of having formal organizational police policies guiding and prescribing types of cooperation with private police (Cunningham and Taylor, 1985; Kakalik and Wildhorn, 1971, 1972). Shearing and Stenning (1981) also suggest that the police need to set up formal policies to enhance organizational culture to facilitate cooperation with PI. Since most cooperation between the two parties has been carried out in informal ways, such as mutual referral of cases and exchanges of information (Scott and McPherson, 1971), officers’ cooperation with PIs would be influenced by the organizational culture among their peers and superiors (Kim, 2007; Shearing et al., 1985).
Based on the review of the literature, the current study will examine the following specific hypotheses:
H1. Case characteristics, such as specialty required in investigation, monopoly of criminal investigation, and presence of legal restriction, are related to officers’ tendency to cooperate with PI.
H2. There is a relationship between officers’ job assignment and the tendency to cooperate with the private police.
H3. Officers’ positive attitudes toward PI will positively influence the cooperation tendency.
H4. Organizational cultural contexts will influence officers’ tendency to cooperate with the private police.
The data utilized in this study were collected for a governmental research project funded by the Police Science Institute, South Korea, in 2010. The initial research project investigated the effects of legalization of PI on public policing. For this purpose, the original study collected data from two groups: citizens and public police officers. The former dataset contained measures of citizens’ attitudes toward PI, and the latter included police officers’ attitudes toward PI. The current study utilized the latter dataset to analyze and identify factors affecting police officers’ attitudes toward PI and their tendency to cooperate with or compete against PIs.
Specifically, the initial study carried out in-depth interviews with police officers who were assigned to the Police Criminal Investigation Innovation Team. Based on the interviews, the researcher constructed a survey questionnaire measuring officers’ attitudes toward PI, tendency for cooperation or competition with PIs, and police work which could be delegated to PIs. Using the preliminary questionnaire, the researcher carried out a field test with 70 police officers who were attending an investigation training course offered by the Korean Police Investigation Academy. After revising the questionnaire based on the results of the field test, the researcher conducted a survey of 400 police officers attending the Korean Police Investigation Academy. The survey participants were attending four different courses, such as general criminal investigation, violent crime investigation, white-collar crime investigation, and sexual crime investigation. Those participants were summoned for training from all different police departments across South Korea at the time of the survey.
The researcher held a training workshop for data collectors to ensure anonymity and voluntariness during data collection. Between June 28 and August 20, 2010, the data collectors visited the Academy and conducted surveys with trainees during the research period. The data collectors explicitly explained to the survey participants that they must not write any identifiers on the survey and could stop the survey at any time, if they wanted. After the series of surveys, the data collectors coded the numerical data into a computer system. In total, 400 surveys were handed out, and 377 trainees responded (final response rate: 94.3 percent).
Measures
The final version of the survey contained measures on demographics including rank, years in service, length of current position, and educational and marital status. Attitudinal measures consisted of 38 items on experiences, aptitude, intention, and tendency relevant to PI. Police experience measure contained six questions on types of cooperation and frequency of cooperation with PIs. Nine vignettes were utilized to measure intention and tendency to cooperate with PI. Among those, the following measures were utilized for the current study.
Dependent variable
The dependent variable was constructed with four items measuring police officers’ attitudes toward cooperation with PIs. Specifically, the items included “I believe the public police should cooperate with PIs,” “When requested, I will work together with PIs,” “I think it is necessary to maintain a good working relationship with PIs,” and “Instead of competing against PIs, I will carry out co-investigations with them, if necessary.” The response options provided were in the form of a five-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly agree=1” to “strongly disagree=5.” Factor analysis and reliability tests were conducted with these four items. The factor loading scores were 0.799, 0.840, 0.854, and 0.807 respectively, and Cronbach’s α for the reliability of the construct was 0.841.
Independent variables
Individual demographics, e.g. age, sex (a dummy variable coded with male=1, female=0), educational level, current rank, length of career in current position, and job assignment (investigative units=1 vs non-investigative units=0) were included. In addition, case characteristics, officers’ rational calculation between costs and benefits of cooperating with PIs, officers’ attitudes toward PI, and organizational cultural contexts were utilized as independent variables.
Specifically, case characteristics were measured in three different aspects: specialty required for investigation, monopoly of criminal investigation, and high profile cases. First, characteristics of a case requiring special skills to carry out investigation, such as white-collar crime, were measured by a question in the form of a vignette. The scenario was as follows:
You learn that a business corporation was committing illegal manipulation of account books (“cooking books”), which wiped out millions of investor won [South Korean unit of currency]. The discloser provided evidence for the illegal business activity, but you could not understand the evidence since it included complex business terms and accounting information.
For this situation, survey participants were asked to respond to the following statement, “I think the public police officers, including me, have difficulty in carrying out investigations of this case.” A five-point Likert scale, ranging from “strongly agree=1” to “strongly disagree=5,” was used to record the answers.
Monopoly of investigation for criminal cases was measured by the statement, “I believe criminal cases, such as homicide, rape, assault, etc., would be better investigated by the public police rather than PIs.” The response options were in the form of a five-point Likert scale, ranging from “strongly agree=1” to “strongly disagree=5[2].”
Officers’ attitudes toward legal constraints in a hot profile case were measured by responses to the following vignette:
You and your department learn of illegal activities by one of the biggest business corporations in South Korea. The information states that the owner of the corporation committed embezzlement and other illegal activities, such as bribery of politicians. News reporters and media paid significant attention to the case and continue to ask about the status of the police investigation.
For this situation, police officers were asked to respond to the following statement, “I think PIs were less legally constrained in this kind of hot profile case.”
Officers’ rational calculation of costs and benefits in cooperating with PIs was measured by the following equation:
(Equation 1)
where CB ratio refers to costs and benefits ratio. The expected cost for cooperation with PIs was measured by an average of responses to two items; “Working with PIs will increase my workload,” and “PIs will only request information regarding cases instead of providing information to the police.” The expected benefit from cooperation with PIs was calculated by averaging the responses to the following three items; “Private investigation activities will supplement police work in the prevention of crimes,” “Private investigation activities will reduce my workload,” and “Private investigation will help the police in solving crimes.” The greater CB ratio indicates higher levels of police perception that PI activities will burden police work.
Officers’ attitudes toward PI were measured in three aspects: investigative capability of PIs, business intention of PIs, and integrity of PI’s business. Police officers’ attitude toward PI’s investigative capability was measured by three items; “I think PIs usually have not received proper education and training to do investigative work,” “I believe PIs are no better than the public officers in terms of personal aptitude,” and “I think PIs have a lack of investigative skills.” The factor loading scores were 0.724, 0.813, and 0.714, respectively, and Cronbach’s α was 0.612, which is slightly higher than the usual threshold of the reliability score.
Police officers’ attitude toward PI’s business intention was measured by three items: “I think PIs just want to make money,” “I think PIs are not deeply concerned with their clients” situation and interests, but are more interested in personally benefiting from the cases, and “I believe PIs carry out their business primarily on behalf of their own financial income, instead of clients’ interests.” The factor loading scores were 0.736, 0.844, and 0.823, respectively, and Cronbach’s α was 0.723. Police officers’ attitude toward the integrity of PI’s business was measured by the question, “I believe PIs are not concerned with clients” right to privacy.
Organizational cultural contexts for cooperation with PIs were measured by two items; “I think my police department does not support working with PIs on cases,” and “I believe my superiors do not like me working with PIs for the cases to which I am assigned.”
Descriptive statistics
As shown in Table I, the sample predominantly consisted of male respondents. About 92 percent of the sample was male police officers, and only about 8 percent were female police officers. This ratio adeptly reflects the population parameter, which is that at the time of the last survey, only about 7 percent of the total police officers in South Korea were female (Korean National Police, 2010). The mean age was 39 years old, with the youngest police officer just 25 years old and the oldest officer 58 years old. About 85 percent the participating officers were married and one officer said he/she was divorced. More than half of the sample had at least a four-year university diploma and, if including the two-year graduates, about 80 percent of the sample had received college or tertiary level education. This educational statistic also adeptly represents the population parameters. About 55 percent of the sample was sergeants, and about 15 percent of the participants fell into managerial ranks, which were higher than lieutenant. Among the participants, about 58 percent of them were assigned to investigative units at the time of the survey. The average length of service in law enforcement was about 13 years, and the mean year in the current positions was three years. Overall, the demographic characteristics showed that the sample statistics accurately reflected the population parameters of the police in South Korea. Descriptive statistics of the latent constructs and observed factors are shown in Table II. The dependent variable consisted of four items ranging between 4 and 20, and the mean of the dependent variable was 13.9, and the standard deviation was 2.7.
Bivariate correlations
Bivariate correlation results (Table III) showed that officers who believe utilizing PIs is costly are significantly less likely to cooperate with PI (r=−0.52). However, officers who believe that PIs are capable of carrying out investigations (r=0.35), that PIs are business-minded (r=0.27), and that PIs are honest (r=0.26), are more likely to cooperate with PIs on their cases. In addition, it seems that officers tend to believe that PIs who are business-minded are more capable of carrying out investigations, and that officers who think PIs are capable and business-minded are more likely to think that PIs are integral (r=0.45, 0.40, respectively). There seems to be no multicollinearity issue, since there is no extreme correlation between any variables[3]. The highest correlation coefficient was 0.67 between participants’ age and rank, which was not unusual. One another strong correlation was 0.57 between officer’s perception on PI’s capability and officer’s perception on PI’s business intents.
Multivariate OLS regressions
The first multivariate OLS regression (Table IV) showed that factors significantly influencing officers’ tendency to cooperate with PIs are case characteristics and officers’ rational calculation in utilizing PIs. Specifically, officers who think that utilizing PIs in their investigations is costly are significantly less likely to cooperate with PIs (B=−1.68). Officers who believe that violent criminal investigation should be monopolized by the police are more likely to cooperate with PIs (B=0.75). This implies that officers, who think that the police should focus on violent crimes and that PIs can carry out civil or non-violent crime cases, are more likely to cooperate with PIs. This tendency is also found in dealing with high profile cases (B=0.45), and officers tend to think that the police should focus on high profile cases and violent crime cases, leaving the revenue to PIs to carry out trivial and/or non-violent cases. In addition, officers who think that the police are more skilled in white-collar crime tend not to cooperate with PIs (B=−0.42), meaning that technical proficiency in investigation is an important factor to consider in cooperation decision.
To examine differences in the tendency to cooperate with PIs across different job units, the subgroup OLS regression analysis was conducted (Table V). The number of officers who were assigned to criminal investigative units were 206, and those in non-investigative units were 152. Among the officers of investigative units, important factors influencing cooperative tendency were CB ratio (B=−2.92) and monopolization of violent crime cases (B=0.68). Above all, officers who actually carry out criminal investigations tend to seriously consider how utilization of PIs would benefit their criminal investigations. Those who think that utilizing PIs in criminal investigations is costly would not consider cooperating with PIs. In addition, officers in investigative units who believe violent criminal investigations should be monopolized by the police are more likely to cooperate with PIs, indicating that the police should focus on violent crime cases whilst PIs carry out civil and non-violent trivial cases.
By contrast, officers who are assigned to non-investigative units considered different factors in making the decision as to whether to cooperate with PIs. The CB ratio was not an important factor for them, but monopolization of violent crime/high profile case investigation and proficiency in investigation skills were important factors. Specifically, non-investigative officers who believe that violent crime cases and high profile cases should be investigated by the police tend to cooperate with PIs (B=0.79 and 0.62, respectively), meaning that the police can utilize PIs’ task forces so that the police can concentrate on violent criminals and high profile cases. In addition, non-investigative officers who believe that cases requiring a high level of specialty, such as white-collar crime, should be investigated by the police tend to be less likely to cooperate with PIs (B=−0.69), whereas those who believe that PIs have investigative capability tend to cooperate with them (B=0.36).
Literature on PI has been continuously emphasized development of a cooperative relationship between the police and PIs to increase effectiveness and efficiency in public policing (e.g. Cunningham and Taylor, 1985; Kakalik and Wildhorn, 1971, 1972). However, there has been few empirical studies conducted to find how the cooperative relationship could be constructed, and no empirical study has been conducted to find what factors affect the cooperative attitudes toward PI among public police officers. To fill the void in the literature, the current study investigated ways of improving cooperative relationship between the two parties and found several important results.
First, to enhance the cooperative relationship between the two parties, previous studies suggested that police officers should have a more positive attitude toward PIs (Gill and Hart, 1997; Scott and McPherson, 1971), that the police should play a managerial role for PIs and their activities (Shearing et al., 1985), and that the police should develop explicit rules of strictly governing PIs (Shearing and Stenning, 1981). However, this study empirically found that, to facilitate a cooperative relationship, PIs’ activities should not burden police investigation in order to ensure that officers perceive there to be more benefits than costs in working with PIs.
Specifically, this study found that police officers regarded the CB ratio as the most important factor to consider in making a decision whether to cooperate with PIs. Furthermore, the importance of the CB ratio was dependent upon job assignment, meaning that police officers who were assigned to criminal investigation units considered the CB ratio as the most critical factor when deciding whether to cooperate with PIs. However, this was not the case for police officers in non-investigative units. These findings indicate that developing cooperative relationship between the two parties is dependent upon how police officers could substantively benefit from supports from PIs. If the police perceive PIs and their involvement hinder and burden police investigation, the police would not utilize PIs for their work.
For more cooperative relationship between the two parties, thus, it is critical to eliminate burdensome interference from PIs and to increase beneficial support from PIs for the police. To do this, organizational policy should explicitly predetermine and pre-describe what cases could be given to PIs to carry out investigation with reliable expectation as to what tasks will be performed and reported by PIs to the police. By so doing, police officers can reduce their work hours in carrying out trivial issues and can instead concentrate on more critical tasks.
Second, unlike previous studies, this study found that case characteristics were important factors affecting police officers’ tendency to cooperate with PIs (RQ1). Particularly, this study found that police officers tend to believe that violent crime cases and high profile cases should be exclusively investigated by the police, and that PIs could carry out trivial cases, such as non-violent, civil cases. This finding empirically supports previous arguments that, although there is great overlap between police work and PI (Cunningham and Taylor, 1985; Scott and McPherson, 1971), there should be an explicitly predetermined division of labor for the police and PIs (Chaiken and Chaiken, 1987; French, 1979; Gill and Hart, 1997; Shearing and Stenning, 1981). For example, French (1979, p. 29) argued that private policing should be limited to a “defensive and passive stance which their preventive role implied.” In contrast, Chaiken and Chaiken (1987) argued that tasks should be divided based on pragmatic reasons, such as investigation skills due to limited resources for PIs. Gill and Hart (1997) suggested that PIs could focus on the cases that the police are reluctant to investigate, such as employee theft, fraud, asset tracing, and matrimonial enquiry.
Third, previous studies argued that private investigators’ poor quality of work was a considerable factor affecting the negative attitude toward PIs among police officers (e.g. Gill et al., 1996a; Shearing et al., 1985). The current study, however, found that only non-investigative unit officers critically considered PI’s investigative skills in making a decision whether to cooperate with PIs (RQ2). This finding suggests that officers in non-investigative units consider PIs to be useful for the police when PIs provide special investigation skills. For example, some cases require special techniques to investigate, such as investigating money laundering and fraud (accounting irregularities). This implies that non-investigative officers consider whether they can utilize PIs and benefit from them in terms of utilizing investigation skills they do not possess. Thus, police organizational policy should prescribe recruiting and training PIs to maintain quality of personnel and tasks to perform for PIs. Such enforcement of quality management of PIs by the police will help to improve PI’s proficiency in investigative skills and techniques so as to alter the CB ratio and enhance officers’ attitude toward PIs.
Finally, this study found that officers’ attitude toward PIs is an important factor, but the effects of the attitude on the tendency to cooperate with PIs vanish when CB ratio and case characteristics are considered (RQ3). In addition, this study found that the organizational cultural context for cooperation had no influence on officers’ tendency (RQ4). Specifically, the results of the bivariate correlations showed that police officers’ tendency to cooperate with PIs was correlated with attitudes such as perception of PI’s investigative skills, PI’s business-minded intention, and PI’s integrity (e.g. see Scott and McPherson, 1971). However, when CB ratio and characteristics of cases were considered, the significance of the relationships disappeared. These findings imply that police officers’ attitude toward PIs is mediated by CB ratio and case characteristics.
This finding contradicts previous studies such as that of Gill and Hart (1997), which suggested that officers’ negative attitudes toward PIs hinder the development of a cooperative relationship. Instead, this study found that, like Scott and McPherson (1971), most of the police officers possessed positive attitudes toward PIs, but they also had negative attitudes toward cooperation with them. This finding suggests that organizational environment in which police officers can calculate costs and benefits of using PIs in their cases could enhance police officers’ positive attitude toward PIs and subsequently develop a cooperative relationship with PIs.
Although previous studies have already suggested similar and numerous policy recommendations as this study does, they lacked empirical evidence to support their suggestions. Particularly, prior studies suggested positive attitudes toward PIs among the public police officer was required to develop a cooperation relationship between the police and PIs. However, the current study empirically found that substantive utility of PIs in police investigation, cases characteristics and burden of PIs’ involvement significantly affected police officers’ attitude toward PIs, and subsequently influenced development of a cooperative relationship with PIs. These findings suggested that police organizational environment including policies could alter existing competitive relationship between the public police and private investigators.
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