NCJ Number
191509
Date Published
December 2000
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This paper examines how law enforcement agencies can deal with public corruption in the non-law enforcement agencies of government.
Abstract
A prerequisite of any campaign to combat corruption is an adequate body of penal law that prohibits those forms of official misconduct that are most harmful to honest government and to the citizenry. Common law systems that have not modernized the traditional offenses of bribery and extortion generate troublesome questions about who initiated the corrupt act, which determines whether a payment is a bribe or an extortion. It is rare to find a total failure of authorities to investigate and penalize corruption offenses, but it is common to find a lack of enforcement action due to antiquated or unenforceable statutes. A fundamental issue in corruption control relates to the structures necessary to implement anti-corruption measures. There are advantages to having a separate unit of law enforcement responsible solely for detecting and investigating corruption. This paper discuses the procedural implementation of an anti-corruption program, the protection of professional reputations in the course of a corruption investigation, target selection strategies for an anti-corruption unit, decisions about resource allocation, intelligence-based targeting, and the use of decoys and integrity testing. The discussion of the latter topic involves an examination of the legal and ethical issues involved in America's ABSCAM operation, in which FBI undercover operatives tested the integrity of members of the U.S. Congress by posing as representatives of a foreign interest and individually offering them money for political favors.