Corruption in security: Excuses, excuses

One of the main roles of a state is to provide security.  States do that in many ways and through many institutions: the military, the police, border controls etc. All of these institutions are, just like any part of the public administration, at risk of corruption. But there are also some problems that are specific to security and make corruption in this area difficult to uncover or to fix.

First, there is a lot of secrecy around the provision of security.  This means that there is less chance of getting caught if you do something corrupt.  Hence, we might expect there to be more corruption (at least, that would be the thinking according to Klitgaard's model of corruption as occurring when officials have monopoly power, discretion, and a lack of accountability; as well as Becker's model of individuals as likely to break the law when the chance of being caught is small and the penalties low).

Second, it's often possible to claim that a decision has been made in the national interest, even if it looks like it was corrupt.  Somehow the national interest is a trump card beyond which people stop questioning.

Third, when corruption is uncovered in the security sphere, the institutions usually clam up and prevent investigations, or conduct inquiries but don't publish the results.  This exacerbates the sense that the institution is corrupt and makes it difficult to rebuild trust.

Fourth, whereas the first step towards fighting corruption in most parts of the public administration is to increase transparency and accountability, in security provision, the same secrecy and national interest reflexes often emerge to block such reforms.  You can see this, for example, in defence procurement, where open and competitive tenders are still much rarer than they should be - see Pyman et al cited below.

But trust is arguably more important for security institutions than for many other parts of the public administration.  If you don't trust the military, you won't sign up to fight.  If you don't trust the police, their job becomes much harder.  If the guy on the border takes bribes, it's all too easy for a terrorist to get a bomb onto a plane.

We need to think about how accountability can be achieved for security institutions.  Here are some papers that I have come across which consider some of these questions:

Moran, Jon. 2005. 'Blue walls,' 'grey areas' and 'cleanups': Issues in the control of police corruption in England and Wales. Crime, Law and Social Change, 43(1): 57-79. 

Pyman, Mark, Regina Wilson and Dominic Scott. 2009. ‘The Extent of Single Sourcing in Defence Procurement and its Relevance as a Corruption Risk: A First Look’, Defence and Peace Economics, Vol. 20, No. 3: 215-232.

  

Teets, Jessica C. and Erica Chenoweth. 2009.  ‘To Bribe or to Bomb: Do Corruption and Terrorism Go Together?’ in Rotberg, Robert I (ed.).  Corruption, Global Security and World Order. Brookings Institution Press. 


TI-UK also has a great typology of defence corruption risks.