Fallen Blue Knights: Controlling Police Corruption

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.

"No one has thought more clearly or researched more deeply into the questions of police corruption than Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovic. She has brought to her study of the commissions investigating police corruption in the United States over the last three decades a framework of scholarship that puts their experience into a useful, more general context. Her personal experience in the police shows through every chapter. This book must be read by anyone addressing the issues of police corruption in the years ahead. No one can fail to learn from Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovic's fine book, Fallen Blue Knights."

–Philip B. Heymann, Professor, Harvard University, author of Terrorism, Freedom, and Security: Winning Without War
"In Fallen Blue Knights Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovic has written a comprehensive, authoritative account of what we know about the causes of police corruption and many of the possible cures. Her work is both a starting point for thinking seriously about this important public problem and a valuable, in-depth reference useful in asking and answering advanced academic and practical questions about the subject. Her work provides the foundation for any serious future thought, research, and action in this domain."
–Mark H. Moore, Professor, Harvard University, co-author of Beyond 911: A New Era for Policing

"Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovic's fine book cuts, with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel, to the crux of the issue of corruption facing American police. This conceptual clarity is used to propose a practical and realistic way forward."
–Clifford Shearing, Professor, Centre of Criminology at the University of Toronto

"…a welcome addition to the world of ideas about how to improve policing."–David Klinger, University of Missouri, St. Louis, for Contemporary Sociology