The analysis of excessive disciplinary action and the effect of disciplinary rationalization policy: an empirical analysis of the results of disciplinary appeals reviews for police officers

ABSTRACT In this paper, we conduct an empirical analysis to examine whether police officers are disciplined more severely than other government officers. We used data on disciplinary actions in cases of bribery, which had been extracted from the casebook on disciplinary appeals reviews (2004–2018) published by the Appeals Commission of the Republic of Korea. The results of the ordinal logistic regression for the entire period (2004–2018) show that disciplinary actions imposed by the police agency were more severe than other government agencies. However, in a period-separated analysis of police disciplinary rationalisation policies in 2011, the differences in the level of disciplinary actions between the police and other agencies were only significant in the former period (2004–2011). The difference was not significant in the latter (2012–2018). This implies that the police agency imposed more severe disciplinary actions than other government agencies in the past. However, the latter period analysis implies that the disciplinary tendency of the police changed due to the effectiveness of the disciplinary rationalisation policy of the South Korean police agency.