Crime and Corruption - Essay Example

Crime and corruption Introduction Crime is a significant part of every society. It is often regarded as the breach of laws or rules for which the legal governing authority can prescribe a conviction. Traditionally, scholars highlight that corruption is a key characteristic of organized crime. For instance, criminals obtain gains using violence and corruption. Therefore, there are intricate relationships between corruption and other types of crime such as economic crime and organized crime. However, contrary to the worldwide view that corruption is a vice affecting third world countries and developing nations, the problem afflicts all countries in the world. The definition of corruption varies among different scholars. In its narrowest sense, corruption is defined as the abuse of government office for personal gains, and in the broader sense, corruption is defined as abuse of not only government office, but also commercial or private office for personal gain. It involves giving, offering, accepting or soliciting a reward or an inducement to influence the action of a person. It manifests itself in various forms such as embezzlement, extortion, fraud, or bribery. Though corruption is considered as a global problem, its pervasiveness varies from one country to the other. It is important to note that corruption always involves large quantities of assets comprising a significant portion of the country’s wealth. Consequently, corruption may jeopardize political stability, the rule of law; undermine values of democracy, ethical value and justice in institutions and slow down the whole process of sustainable development. This paper seeks to identify and discuss the main problems associated with crime and corruption and illustrate how transnational crime and corruption impact world politics. Problems of crime and corruption Crime takes different forms and is accompanied by diverse effects. Just every person in his or her lifetime, has been exposed to some form of crime whether doing it or not. However, the process of law enforcement helps control the crime rates. The society incurs significant losses when investing in new jails instead of channeling its funds to productive use such as increasing its employees’ wages and creation of employment. A recent study highlighted that the society pays more than two times the average household income for the incarceration of one inmate (Bardhan, 1997). This therefore means that a significant portion of the taxpayers’ money is directed towards ensuring criminals are well fed and safe instead of channeling the funds into efficient use such as better education, higher wages and infrastructural development. The World Bank has identified corruption as the greatest impediment to social and economic development of a country. It weakens development through distorting the rule of law and jeopardizing the institutional foundation upon which a country’s economic growth is strongly built on (World Bank, 2001). In the same way, the International Monetary Fund highlights that most cases involving corruption are economic in nature, and thus its consequences tend to affect the economy of the nation (Mo, 2001). Corruption also affects the economic growth by generating significant inefficiency and distortions. It diverts public investment into capital projects where kickbacks and bribes are plenty. Government officials may increase the costs and technical complexities of the public sector projects in order to pave way or conceal such dealings, hence distorting economic development. Corruption also weakens compliance with the regulatory authorities, hence the quality of government services and infrastructure consequently weakens. Corruption therefore tends to introduce a shift of government spending away from social areas towards the establishment of lower quality infrastructural investment or unneeded projects (Mo, 2001). In the private sector, corruption increases the cost of running a business through illicit payments, the control of costs incurred in negotiating with officials and the risk of detection. The availability of bribes can induce officials to engineer new regulations and delays. However, removing existing regulations is rather easier than allowing such rules to be bypassed by bribes. With this scenario in mind, it can therefore be deduced that corruption enables the existence of inefficient firms. Corruption also affects foreign direct investment in the context of costs incurred in operating a business. Corruption involves an arrangement between two parties, the supplier and the demander. In this case, corruption is said to have influence on the allocation of resources and abuse or use of public responsibility for private gains. Thus, the demander can be a public official while the supplier may be a foreign investor. The foreign investor has to incur extra expenses in the form of bribes in order to obtain government permits or licenses to undertake an investment. In this case, we can highlight that corruption increases the investment costs. The additional costs incurred by the foreign investors reduce the anticipated profitability gained from the investments. Thus, corruption can be viewed as a tax on a nation’s revenues (Bardhan, 1997). Since corruption is not enforceable, dealing in corruption increase uncertainty. Corruption has also been closely linked to an increase in poverty and health problems (Abed and Gupta, 2002). This is because money that is supposed to be channeled to eradicating these social problems ends up being embezzled. Studies however show that people who are exposed to poverty are more likely to indulge in crime; therefore, corruption in itself is a form of crime and makes people indulge in other crimes (Abed and Gupta, 2002). To sum up, the effects of crime and corruption calls for speculation. They introduce many problems to the society, many that have long-term adverse impacts. Crime erodes a country’s idealism, an objective each country strives to achieve (Beckett, 1997). It makes employers incur billions of losses each year due to theft and bribery, it costs individual families loses due to low income and to the extreme, it costs a grandmother a chance to see her grandchildren. The country faces serious problems such as unemployment, income inequality, and slow economic and political growth, just to name a few. Transnational crime and corruption, and world politics Transnational crime refers to crime that occurs across national borders. This has profound consequences for the ordering of the global systems (Beckett, 1997). Generally, issues like global security and stability are affected by global crimes. The security of a country can be endangered by threats to its political stability, economic well-being, social harmony, environment and health of the citizens. Fredriksson and Svensson (2003) claim that, during the post Cold war time, the security of human collectivities was affected by major dimensions of security, such as political, military, environmental, economical and political, and transnational crime is contains such impacts. Transnational crime groups emerge in the absence of carefully established civil society (Fredriksson and Svensson, 2003). For instance, in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; or as a result of conflict and insurgency such as the case of Afghanistan, Somalia, Turkey, Sri Lanka and Bosnia. These criminal groups are often associated with the former institutions of totalitarian bureaucracy. In Japan, four recent Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Prime Ministers were forced to resign on allegations of crime related cases. Consequently, Thailand’s political stability has largely been affected cases related to heroin trafficking and allegations of unscrupulous business practices by Suharto family of Indonesia, which have led to criticism against the former president. A well-known example of a transnational crime is terrorism. Terrorism occurs both locally and across borders, for instance, the recent bombing of the United States by the Alqaeda group that resulted in numerous deaths. This crime affected world politics significantly. This crime brought a division whereby some countries have ganged up to support the United States while other supported the Alqaeda group. The war between Iraq and the United States has also led to sharp divisions among nations of the world. This has greatly jeopardized global peace and resulted in political instability (Cook and Jens, 2000). There is also the issue of money laundering whereby wealthy politicians deposit illegal funds into other states. For instance, a wealthy politician can decide to deposit illegal money to a bank in another country. The banking institution is fully aware that the deposited money is illegal but then due to the fact that the country needs to maintain a functional relationship with the other state, it may choose to conceal the crime. This is why many politicians deposit their funds in banking institutions outside their own countries (Welsh et al., 2000). However, international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation have become increasingly involved in activities aimed at reducing transnational crime, and bribery and corruption in international business dealings. Conclusion This paper has identified the problems associated with crime and corruption. Some of the problems identified include, poor infrastructural development, poor governance, increased poverty, slowed sustainable development and political and economic instability. Crime and corruption tend to ruin the public image of the country. For instance, Saudi Arabia is a well-known country that is prone to crime related activities and therefore, the country is always isolated in many global peace pacts. The paper has also illustrated how transnational crimes and corruption impact international politics. Indeed, it acknowledges that transnational crimes and corruption jeopardize global security and political instability. References Abed, G.T. and Gupta, S., 2002. Governance, Corruption and Economic Performance, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC. Bardhan, P. 1997. “Corruption and Development: A Review of Issues.” Journal of Economic Literature 25: 1320–46. Beckett, Katherine, 1997. Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Cook, Philip J., and Jens Ludwig, 2000. Gun Violence: The Real Costs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Fredriksson, P.G. and Svensson, J., 2003. ‘Political instability, corruption and policy formation: The case of environmental policy’, Journal of Public Economics, 87(7–8):1383–405. Mo, P.H., 2001. ‘Corruption and economic growth’. Journal of Comparative Economics, 29(1):66–79. Public Economics, 76(3):399–457. U4 Anticorruption Resource Center available on http://www.u4.no/helpdesk/helpdesk/queries/query44.cfm retrieved February 17, 2011. Welsh, Brandon C., David P. Farrington, and Lawrence W. Sherman, Eds, 2001. Costs and Benefits of Preventing Crime. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. World Bank, World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty, Washington DC: Oxford University Press, 2001a. Read More