Police Strategies to Control High-Level Corruption A Global Perspective (2022) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 5-24
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That science would aim to foster global development of the police role, among other actors, in combatting high-level corruption. A science of anti-corruption policing is desperately needed.
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to convene an ad hoc consensus committee to review and assess existing evidence on policing institutions, police practices and capacities, and police legitimacy in the international context. THE COMMITTEE'S CHARGE The National Academies assembled the Committee on Evidence to Advance Reform in the Global Security and Justice Sectors ("the committee")
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. As such, the police institution has great responsibility to act in ways consistent with laws and international human rights norms and standards.
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Drawing on relevant literature, particularly from the international context, the project will inform the State Department's capacity-building activities aimed at strengthening the effec tiveness of local, in-country law enforcement agencies, building the technical skills of foreign law enforcement personnel through training and technical assistance, and assisting in institutional police reform at the local level. Each of the five (5)
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The workshop was designed to gather additional and comparative perspectives on the lessons learned from anti-corruption efforts and investigations and prosecutions of high-level corruption. Participants were asked to consider any available research that could inform what police should or should not do to combat high-level corruption and how they might be insulated from political consequences.
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Common or particularly problematic harms caused by corrupt high-level governance include violation of human rights, extortion from business owners and citizens, harassment of journalists or political opponents, mismanagement and filtering of financial and other resources away from social services, systemic bribery, weakened insti tutional controls as well as accountability, inequities in the administering the rule of law, miscounting of ballots in ostensibly democratic elections, and systematic violence against specific groups of people viewed as undesirable by a political regime. Further, police themselves can be tied up in high-level corruption, for example, by participating in one or more of the harms identified above or by being called upon (i.e., co-opted by political elites)
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Existing research suggests that investigative and judicial institutions play an important role in combating corruption, which may boost accountability, improve citizen trust, and bolster public service delivery. One study of the anti-corruption program conducted by investigators in a federal oversight agency in Brazil that randomly selected municipalities for audits of their use of federal funds found an improvement in public service delivery among local governments that underwent audits (Funk and Owen, 2020)
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Thus, rather than being seen solely as bolstering the rule of law, existing research suggests that corruption investigations may sometimes be perceived as -- and sometimes are -- politically motivated. Further study of the Argentine case, drawing on quantitative analysis of highly detailed data on bribe-collection by high-ranking officials, provides additional evidence of the deeply entrenched nature of corruption within political systems.
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It is quite common across the globe to raise awareness of high-level corruption, prompting formal investigations, through investigative journalism or other civil society action. Including police in the work of other agencies, such as anticorruption commissions, can be one way of engaging police in controlling corruption.
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If no fiscal transparency exists, public financial regulations matter very little, because there is no effective surveillance. If no autonomous bureaucracy exists, and the state is a vertically integrated pyramid of extraction, no ethical codes or soft ethical regulations will help.
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Despite continued international attention to anti-corruption interventions, world governance indicators show there has been little change during the 10 years for indicators of corruption control (Mungi-Pippidi, 2022; The World Bank, n.d.) While one can debate the validity of governance indicators to track precisely trends over time and significant shifts in corruption levels, they still serve to suggest that corruption globally remains a substantial problem to be addressed.
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These surveys capture business leaders' opinions about their country's government as well as objective measures of business regulations for firms, and the steps needed to start and run a functioning business. Relative to public and expert opinion surveys, these data provide a different perspective: a picture of what it is like to do business in a country, and what regulatory hurdles exist that may need to be reformed to increase productivity and freedom from extortion.
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These tools can be useful for an initial desk review to get a sense of historical, political, and/or economic context in particular countries (see Box 1-3 for a simple exercise using the Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer to identify countries where engaging police in anti-corruption efforts may be more productive [Ferreira and BOX 1-3 Exercise: Finding Contexts for Police to Combat High-level Corruption In their paper, Ferreira and Mungiu-Pippidi (2022) conducted a simple exercise looking at the scores from the Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer, which surveys 113 countries and has specific questions on grand corruption, police, and anti-corruption policy approval (Transparency International, 2021)
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Institutions with a role in preventing corruption have been broken down into three main categories: anti-corruption coordinating councils, dedicated corruption prevention bodies, and public institutions (OECD, 2013)
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. Public institutions play an important role in anti-corruption efforts but often are not specifically established to combat corruption.
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Groups such as the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions, the Southern African Forum against Corruption, the Network of Anti-Corruption Authorities and Law Enforcement Agencies, the Council of Europe's Network of Corruption Prevention Authorities, and the International Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities make up just a handful of groups involved in capacity building and cross-border cooperation for investigations and asset recovery (Schütte, 2020)
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. Research evidence on what motivates citizens to supply information to the police voluntarily on suspected corruption is rare.2 This is partly because the police tend not to view corruption control as part of their duties, hence official crime statistics are often silent on corruption cases.
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. Police reforms at the community level can have an impact on high-level corruption because they may help to increase police legitimacy and enhance police autonomy.
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These organizations not only share information from across the globe with involved stakeholders, but they also allow members to reach out for assistance from experts to support anti-corruption projects. ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT Examining a complex and multifaceted phenomenon with a limited research base to inform police practices, the committee sought to provide practical guidance by drawing lessons learned from cases where interventions to combat corruption appear to have been successful.
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