NCJ Number
193955
Date Published
December 1998
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This article is a commentary on a paper that states that corruption is a human conduct that is undertaken sometimes deliberately but gradually.
Abstract
In democratic systems, public officials should act to pursue the public interest but private interests and goals are not always coincident with those professed in public. The most important aspects influencing the levels of corruption are the accountability of decision-makers and the erosion of it. The five necessary components of corruption are: (1) a decision maker, (2) with discretionary power, (3) who is accountable, (4) the exchange relation between the actors of corruption, (5) and the hidden nature of this relation. Relating this to the situation of corruption in Italy, criminal law remains an essential component in the fight against corruption. Penal sanctions can play their most effective role if aided by a number of other measures, thus constituting a comprehensive and long-term anti-corruption strategy. Incentives should be provided for the producers of morality: schools, families, cultural, religious, and political associations. This might involve appropriate legislative reforms, redirecting of public expenses, and additional public investments. All possible strategies should be used as disincentives for destroyers of morality: organized crime, managers of corporations creating slush funds, and international corrupters. Greater emphasis should be given to self-regulation by means of codes of conduct providing for a variety of administrative sanctions, to the expulsion from the corporation or the public administration office. Since the focal point of corruption still remains the public administration, it is important that legislative reforms are implemented in order to de-regulate and re-regulate a sector that is often characterized by confusion and that provides enormous opportunities for the illicit exchange of favors. 21 footnotes