Ethics is an indispensable component of the criminal justice system. That is because ethics is needed to define a criminal act and determine a proper punishment, and guide decisions and actions of judges, juries, police officers, and lawyers. More precisely, strict adherence to the principles of ethics ensures impartiality and protection of the rights of victims and criminals. The present essay addresses the issue of public corruption from individual, organizational, and societal perspectives.
The concept of public corruption refers to the misuse of power by a public official to gain some personal benefits. The theory of ethical formalism that is represented in the works of Immanuel Kant and John Rawls argues that “the only thing truly good is goodwill, and that what is good is that which conforms to the categorical imperative” (Pollock, 2018, p. 33). A categorical imperative, in its turn, could be understood as a rule of conduct that is ethically and morally right and obligatory with no exceptions. From this, it could be inferred that public corruption results from the breach of laws or rules that all members of a society should follow.
Public corruption could be explained on individual, societal, and organizational levels. According to Pollock (2018), the most popular explanation of public corruption conducted by an individual police officer is the rotten-apple argument. This argument defends the position that an officer who misconducted is deviant and “it was simply a mistake to hire him or her” (Pollock, 2018). Gorsira et al. (2018) study reveal that public officials moral conviction on whether they should refrain from corruption makes them more or less inclined to abuse power. When criminologists investigate cases of public corruption, they might use the individual explanation to claim that a police officer or a public official committed a crime since he or she has low self-control, poor education, a high sense of entitlement, or is cynical (Pollock, 2018). Therefore, the essence of individual explanation is that the society and an organization where a corrupted employee works are unrelated to the crime committed.
An individual explanation of a case of corruption can be found in Luc Besson’s movie Leon: The professional . The entire story between Leon, the killer, and a 12-years-old girl Mathilda starts with the death of her family. Mathilda’s parents and siblings were killed by the corrupt agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration with which her father cooperated. The police officers were interested in gaining benefits from selling the drugs by accessing them via Mathilda’s father. This way, from the perspective of individual explanations of public corruption, the officers misconducted because they wanted to retrieve personal benefits from the situation.
The organizational explanation of public corruption argues that a person committed wrongdoing because of the micro-climate within his or her organization that contradicts the principles of ethics. As Pollock (2018) puts it, it is common for small workgroups to develop a culture that contradicts ethical norms and provokes corrupted behavior. In addition to that, organizational culture per se, both formal and informal, could cause corruption (Pollock, 2018). For instance, officers might not be trained to successfully detect ethical dilemmas and solve them.
Another feature that could cause public corruption on the organizational level is mistrust between employees and a lack of understanding and cooperation in a team. Pollock (2018) cites a study conducted by Elizabeth Reuss-Ianni on the issue of public corruption. The author has discovered that in the 1970s, in New York, there were tense relations between street cops and management cops (Pollock, 2018). The subculture of street cops was based on the fact that they cherished loyalties and commitments more than laws (Pollock, 2018). Hence, even though a decision to commit an act of corruption could be made only by an individual, the culture and climate within his or her organization could affect this decision.
An organizational explanation of public corruption could be found in Stephen King’s novel The Green Mile which was later filmed by Ferenc Darabont. Overall, The Green Mile is a story about prison wardens who had no chance to prevent the death penalty of John Coffey even though they knew that he was innocent. This novel contains numerous ethical dilemmas and is an excellent food for thought. One of the examples of public corruption conducted by the wardens is when they brought the prisoner, John Coffey, into the house of their boss, Hal Moores. They committed this act to help the boss and his wife, who was dying of cancer since Coffey had the gift of healing people. Even though it is strictly forbidden for wardens to take prisoners out of jail, three wardens cooperated and implemented their risky plan since they had a culture of respecting and protecting each other. From this, it could be inferred that the prison wardens of block E committed public corruption not because they were flawed but because of their small group’s internal culture.
The societal explanation of public corruption is that society, its norms, standards, and rules, made corruption possible. The fundamental idea behind societal explanations of public corruption is that it happens due to “lax community standards over certain types of behavior (gambling, prostitution) and lack of support from prosecutors and the courts” (Pollock, 2018, p. 201). Society makes corruption possible because “we want the police to enforce the law unless they enforce it against us” (Pollock, 2018, p. 201). Indeed, under such circumstances, it is hard to avoid corruption because some officers might say that it was rational not to pay attention to the law violations of certain individuals.
The case of corruption provoked by society could be observed in the documentary film The Seven Five, directed by Tiller Russell. This film tells the story of the former police officer, Michael Dowd, who controlled local drug dealers for ten years. Without a doubt, it is impossible to deny that this is the factor of Dowd’s personality that made him take money from the criminals. At the same time, Dowd noticed a crack pandemic in New York, and, thus, he realized that local people could tolerate drug dealers. Hence, to some extent, society forced Dowd to take bribes from drug dealers.
Fortunately, there are ways to eliminate or, at least, reduce each type of corruption discussed above. To illuminate corruption caused by personal factors, it is necessary to increase salaries. As a result, the motivation of officials and police officers to take bribes will decrease since they will become satisfied with their income. It is also vital to conduct audits regularly and invest in the education and training of employees. As for corruption explained by organizational factors, it could be reduced by improving internal relations within units of an organization and providing ethical leadership for employees (Pollock, 2018). Public corruption, explained by societal factors, requires the transformation of the entire society (Khan et al., 2021). This transformation is hard to conduct since it involves a lot of resources. Nonetheless, most importantly, working with staff members to teach them to cope with ethical dilemmas effectively and resist the temptation to take a bribe is necessary.