Crime, Poverty and Police Corruption in Developing Countries

Crime and the fear of being hit by crime and small-scale violence are key economic and social problems in most developing countries, not least felt strongly by the poor. Extensive corruption in the police, experienced or perceived, contributes seriously to the problem. A key question raised in the paper is: How is police corruption linked to the wider processes of development - including crime, violence and poverty? The paper examines (i) how and why corruption may arise in the daily routines of the police and whether it may have impacts on crime rates; (ii) empirical indications of whether the police may be more corrupt than other groups of public officials; (iii) how and why police corruption may vary across countries; and (iv) the wider impacts of police corruption on developmentCorruption Crime Police Poverty JEL classification: D73, K42, O17

“Close but no cigar”: the measurement of corruption

The financial cost of corruption has recently been estimated at more than 5 per cent of global GDP. Yet, despite the widespread agreement that corruption is one of the most pressing policy challenges facing world leaders, it remains as widespread today, possibly even more so, as it was when concerted international attention began being devoted to the issue following the end of the Cold War. In reality, we still have a relatively weak understanding of how best to measure corruption and how to develop effective guides to action from such measurement. This paper provides a detailed review of existing approaches to measuring corruption, focusing in particular on perception-based and non- perceptual approaches. We highlight a gap between the conceptualisation of corruption and its measurement, and argue that there is a tension between the demands of policy-makers and anti-corruption activists on the one hand, and the motivations of academic researchers on the other. The search for actionable answers on the part of the former sits uncomfortably with the latter’s focus on the inherent complexity of corruption

Corruption. A review of Contemporary Research

During the last decade corruption has become a topical issue in the international development policy debate. Research on corruption has also expanded rapidly, taking many different directions both within and across disciplines. This report provides an overview of contemporary research on corruption. The academic focus is on economic approaches, but perspectives from political science and social anthropology are also included. The presentation is mostly non-technical, although a few expositions of more analytically demanding matters are included. Relevance for development policy is the underlying guide for the selection of topics that are included in the study. The report should be useful for development practitioners and foreign aid officials, as well as for students and journalists interested in development issues

Child soldiers: Reasons for variation in their rate of recruitment and standards of welfare

-Why do some children voluntarily join while other children are forced to join military organization in situations of conflict, and why do the organizations recruit them? How is the actual number of children determined? These are the questions raised in this paper. To address them the author draws on results and ideas from three independent lines of research; One dealing with child labour in general, another with the study of conflicts and the third with children’s decision-making powers based on child psychology

The Challenge of Poor Governance and Corruption

-The paper is the author’s so-called ‘Opponent paper « to Susan Rose- Ackerman’s proposals for good governance and anti-corruption poli-cies at the Copenhagen Consensus 2004 meeting 24–28 May. There the most promising anti-corruption policies had to compete with other best poli-cies at other fields such as fight against AIDS, malaria, hunger prevention, and so on. He argues that while corruption and governance problems are important and may prevent any other kind of policy to succeed, no really effective anti-corruption policy has so far been proposed, and if it was, we wouldn’t know that it did. Hence, it would be unreasonable to make a strong claim for anti-corruption projects against their competitors

'A house of straw, sticks or bricks'? Some notes on corruption empirics

-Corruption has become a fashionable subject the last decade or so. The decades before it was neglected, and the phenomenon itself has been around as long as large-scale organisations. One reason for large shifts in emphasis is the lack of precise knowledge about corruption, particularly at elite level. That admits different views. When both social scientists’ and politicians’ perceptions are interrelated large shifts may be expected. By comparing the major corruption indexes such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Indexes to an earlier attempt to expand precise knowledge for policymaking, I argue that they are unable to supply the knowledge needed. The difficulty in gaining information about elite corruption is illustrated by means of simple game theory