In 2020, the law professors John Rappaport and Ben Grunwald published an article called “The Wandering Officer,” where they found that police officers who had been fired earlier in their career were more likely to be fired again—and more likely to receive a “moral character violation” complaint. The research has informed the debate about police reform in the years since.

Four years later, Rappaport—along with Jonathan S. Masur and Aurélie Ouss—has published another article, revealing that, on average, policing is a stagnant job, meaning that police officers very rarely move between jobs and departments. The researchers got access to 20 years of data and found that roughly 70 percent of Illinois officers in their sample had held just one job, and another 21 percent had held just two. And it’s not necessarily that they’re choosing to stay in one job. A lot of policies have made it costly to switch agencies.

What the researchers found is that when police are stuck in the same law-enforcement agency, stuck with the same peers and commanding officer, they are also more likely to adhere to the “blue wall of silence”—an unwritten code to never implicate another officer of wrongdoing. As the authors write, “Unlike in other professions, it is terribly difficult for police officers to quit in protest or even to object to the orders they receive. If the policies and priorities of senior law enforcement management are misguided, the entire law enforcement organization is stuck with them.”

In today’s episode of Good on Paper, Rappaport joins me to discuss both of his papers and the factors keeping police locked in place.

Read more at The Atlantic