Police officers have an obligation to their profession to continuously strive for fairness for all the people they serve. However, some police officers are believed to have developed prejudicial attitudes towards some groups of the society and exercised police power unfairly against them. Especially, when the actions of the police are prejudicial during criminal investigation, this can affect outcomes of the investigation. Therefore, the police need to tackle this problem effectively.
In order to develop a preventive strategy, the police must have a clear understanding of prejudice. However, there has been little research on this topic in Korea. Thus, this study attempted to fill the gap.
The purpose of the current study was to examine if prejudice of police officers are statistically valid. In order to answer this research question, the present study utilized the results of 173 polygraph examinations that had been employed to investigate traffic accidents in a provincial police agency in 2006. From the polygraph examination reports, information relating to the subjects could be identified and this information was analyzed, using a logistic regression.
The results of the logistic regression revealed that most of the variables relating to the subjects did not affect the credibility of the subjects\' statements. This means the police officers\' belief that some groups of people make false statements more often than others during criminal investigation is an unfounded prejudice.