Police Corruption

POLICE CORRUPTION

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POLICE CORRUPTION

Introduction

High levels of police corruption are usually associated with low levels of police responsiveness to the public , a negative service orientation and ineffectiveness in detecting crime . In the ex-colonial context these features are not necessarily caused by corruption but are certainly intensified by it . Police deviance tends to subvert internal and external accountability , as well as public confidence in , and cooperation with , the police . Indeed , institutionalized corruption may signify a breakdown in law , with the security forces becoming predators rather

than protectors . The extent and character of corruption in the police institution may not simply affect its effectiveness but , more important , it may , in very profound ways alter its symbolic representation in the consciousness of the population it is supposed to serve , thus contributing handsomely to the legitimacy crisis . Also of importance from the viewpoint of this study , it props internal resistance to reform by providing additional motivation and the social bonding that facilitates the sociopolitical networking for the reinforcement of a conservative coalition , and the material resources that enable aspects of the resistance to change . Thus the prospects for any reform project cannot be properly understood without reference to police corruption . Here police corruption is studied as both a target of reform and a source of resistance to it . Police corruption is defined here as the misuse by police personnel of their office or authority for personal or other particularistic ends . These ends are not restricted to pecuniary or material values symbolic values , such as power and status are also included . Nor is the beneficiary restricted to the constable involved it may also be an institution such as a political party or the police force itself . This definition , as its author notes , avoids being either too inclusive (for example , including the acceptance of hospitable gestures from citizens with no intent to secure preferential treatment or the waiving of sanctions in the future or too exclusive (for example excluding transactions involving symbolic values . The definition of corruption adopted by the public is similarly broad

Corruption must be distinguished from criminality . The former need not entail a violation of the law , and the latter need not entail the exploitation of the authority of the police . However , in forces where corruption is institutionalized , both corruption and criminality tend to be strongly associated , and for this reason , while police criminality is treated as conceptually distinct

TYPES OF CORRUPTION

Having defined corruption , the next analytically useful step would be to categorize its forms . Typologies commonly use as their organizing principles the forms of corruption , the degree of corruption of the subject (conceptualized as a continuum from "grass eaters , through to "meat eaters " and rogues ) and the intensity of the activity (habitual meat eaters , occasional meat eaters and so forth . An understanding of the internal and external stimuli inducing corrupt behavior is essential for developing enduring solutions to this problem . An analytically useful typology , it is argued , should therefore illuminate both the motives of the subjects and the...