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The surprising case of police bribery reduction in South Africa

Peiffer, Caryn; Marquette, Heather; Armytage, Rosita; Budhram, Trevor

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Authors

Caryn Peiffer

Heather Marquette

Rosita Armytage

Trevor Budhram



Abstract

The paper examines why there was a reduction of almost 15% in police bribery in Limpopo province, South Africa between 2011 and 2015, compared to only a 4% reduction the country overall. Drawing on statistical analysis and in-depth qualitative fieldwork, the research shows that the reduction occurred during an unprecedented anticorruption intervention in the province that did not directly tackle police bribery. Despite this, the intervention’s high visibility, along with uncertainty among the police of its mandate, was likely to have made police less willing to engage in bribery during this period. While police sector-specific characteristics (high degree of discretion, peer solidarity and contact with criminals) make fighting entrenched corruption particularly difficult, the research shows how a disruptive event can counteract these factors and how this can happen more quickly than previously anticipated. For long-term impact, however, disruption strategies likely need to be driven by strong leadership and structural changes that will continually disrupt corruption patterns.

Citation

Peiffer, C., Marquette, H., Armytage, R., & Budhram, T. (2019). The surprising case of police bribery reduction in South Africa. Crime, Law and Social Change, 72(5), 587-606. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-019-09843-8

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date May 17, 2019
Publication Date Dec 31, 2019
Deposit Date Sep 18, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Crime, Law and Social Change
Print ISSN 0925-4994
Electronic ISSN 1573-0751
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 72
Issue 5
Pages 587-606
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-019-09843-8

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a
link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.






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