Amundsen (1999) explains that one of the factors that shapes or enhances how police corruption is understood and categorised is the concept of 'Incidental Corruption'.
Incidental corruption denotes ‘private’ and ‘collective’ forms of police corrupt practices that occur as an offshoot of their work rather than a central part of it (ibid 1999). As De Sardan (1999) posits, the notion of the private does not mean that the act is carried out as a secret social exchange. Instead, it refers to the individual benefits generated, for example, monetary benefit gained from the practices of corruption. These benefits may also be to a group of police officers who act with coherence and unity, to elicit advantages (Amundsen 1999).
Causes of police corruption
Studies cite many different causes of police corruption. Corruption has been associated with the structure of the police organisation; societal culture, pessimistic views of police officers’ moral attributes as well as the situational context and working environment of
the police (Sherman 1978; Kelling and Moore 1988; Newburn 1999; Andvig, Fjeldstad, Amundsen, Sissener and Soreide 2000; Porter and Warrender 2009; Domoro and Agil 2012; Douvlis and South 2003; Rawlinson 2012; Punch 2013; Keane and Bell 2014).
Additionally, police corruption can also be influenced by societal politics, as well as the culture and norms of the people or the society within which they operate (Newburn 1999;
Treisman 2000; Tavits 2005; Tanye 2010; Domoro and Agil 2012).
Most police corruption studies have uncovered the lack of effective organisational accountability as having some implications upon police corruption (Chan 1999; Newburn 1999; Verma 1999; Punch 2000, 2009). Benson (1981), for instance, argued that officers’
engagement in corruption is strongly linked to what is referred to as organisational incentives. Thus, an organisation may create an environment that may generate or foster integrity rather than tolerance for police corruption and vice-versa. Police corruption is often related to an absence of institutional accountability, in which police authority and supervisors endorse their officers' misconduct or stoop to it themselves. This can occur where the police structure turns a ‘blind eye’ to corrupt behaviour or neglects to mete fitting discipline for it. Police corruption is more likely where a police hierarchical structure chooses not to see or notice signs of corrupt police leaders. This can be exemplified by supervisory negligence as highlighted in 1999 USA, which according to Weitzer (2002) and Williams (2002), accounted for police corrupt practices within the Rampart division of the Los Angeles Police office.
In another example, the Center for Democratic Development (2000) contends that, in Ghana specifically, the reasons for public-police corruption practices incorporate a blend of factors. Namely, the perception from police officers that they are greatly underpaid, ineffective police internal management systems, like inadequate accountability, supervision, ineffective authorisation of the law, and ineffective anti-corruption measures. Beek, Göpfert, Owen, and Steinberg (2017) further contends that in Ghana, particularly at the street-level, police officers evoke the law by means of acting seriously and making inferences about the offence committed. Thereby, evoking the law, provides the opportunity for officers and some members of the public to drift in and out of corruption. Beek et al (2017) argues that the Ghanaian public are often a victim of police checks at police stops. In this context, members of the public anticipate that they must offer money to the police:
Due to their monetary interests, police officers are interested in keeping cases at their level. They do not want to pass it on to the courts or to the appropriate police department. Such an approach thwarts the police officer’s expectation of a money (ibid 2017:
10).
It has also been argued that if police officers in West Africa were to enforce the law diligently, they would overburden the courts. Against this background, most people in Ghana would prefer to avoid the time, energy, and cost of going to court, “They just waste your time.” (Beek et al 2017:10). Nonetheless, although there is an effort to enforce road regulations, most people also attempt to circumvent these traffic regulations. For instance, drivers in general, but especially commercial drivers, also attempt to counter the
full enforcement of the law by inclining towards offering money to the police. There is an expectation that in receiving their incentive, the police would accommodate their situational interests. Furthermore, social relations in Ghana tend to operate on the notion
‘We are all human beings.’ (Beek 2017: 7). This arguably influences corruption on the pillars of a benevolent society. Additionally, according to Andvig (2008), due to the economic challenges in sub-Saharan Africa more generally, there is an expectation that corruption is rife. The primary underlying factor for such corrupt practices is seen as the connection between poverty and corruption.
However, police corruption affects all police services across the world. It is not just restricted to Ghana. For example, during the 1970’s, Detective Frank Serpico found evidence of systematic corruption by his colleagues in the New York Police force whereby they were regularly accepting bribes (Gobert and Punch 2000; Fried 2001;
Johnson 2006; Kilgannon 2010). In the UK, the Serious Organised Crime Agency noted over a period of two years, 73 police officers had been suspended following incidents of misconduct (Darbyshire 2016).
Furthermore, it became apparent that in 1999, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) declined to charge officers amid a police corruption investigation in view of the inadequacies in the law in the United Kingdom. Even though the officers concerned affirmed that they had taken part in corruption, the evidence collected was not seen to be sufficiently solid by the CPS for them to justify criminal charges. Police organisations
may also conceal some police conduct from the public and thus restrict evidence against them (Hope 2015).
Corrupt conduct has direct implications upon the moral standing of the police as well as the public trust in the police. Hence, some police organisations (for instance, Yokohama Police) limit sharing knowledge on internal corruption to avoid the reduction in public trust in the police (William 2002). In this case, it may be argued that police accountability becomes non-transparent – arguably a corrupt practice itself. Additionally, considering such lapses in institutional accountability where, for instance, the structure or the leadership of the police are derelict in managing police corruption, police officers under investigation for corruption commonly come off without any repercussions. This in turn may influence a decline in citizens reporting incidents of police corruption to the designated office. Consequently, this can facilitate increased occurrences of police corruption (Oleinik 2016).