Illegal and Legal Corruption
As
stated in last week’s blog post, Pennsylvania is often ranked in the top
ten of the most corrupt states in America!
At least two surveys¹ rank Pennsylvania as the fifth most corrupt state in
the fifty states.²
A particular in-depth study³ by the Harvard University
Ethics Center entitled “Measuring Illegal and Legal Corruption in American
States: Some Results from the Corruption in America Survey,” is most revealing.
The Harvard study includes the following definitions:
Illegal
Corruption
“We define illegal corruption as the private gains in
the form of cash or gifts by a government official, in exchange for providing
specific benefits to private individuals or groups.”
Legal Corruption
“We define legal
corruption as the political gains in the form of campaign contributions or
endorsements by a government official, in exchange for providing specific
benefits to private individuals or groups, be it by explicit or implicit
understanding.”
Institutional Corruption
According to the
Harvard study, illegal corruption and legal corruption are examples and part of
a larger form of corruption known as “institutional corruption,” which Lawrence
Lessig⁴ has defined as follows:
Institutional
corruption “is manifest when there is a systemic and strategic influence
which is legal, or even currently
ethical, that undermines the institution’s effectiveness by diverting it from
its purpose or weakening its ability to achieve its purpose, including, to the
extent relevant to its purpose, weakening either the public’s trust in that
institution or the institution’s inherent trustworthiness.”
Though
we will focus today on Harvard’s rankings of illegal and legal corruption in
Pennsylvania, we will soon return to the more relevant issue of institutional
corruption at the PASSHE system of fourteen universities, which include Bloomsburg,
California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock
Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester.
We
will then explore Lessig’s definition as it applies to the institutional
corruption that is undermining PASSHE’s effectiveness by diverting it from its
Act 188 statutory purpose(essentially by ignoring it), or weakening its ability
to achieve its purpose, which is to provide “High quality education at the
lowest possible cost to the students” (by espousing and brazenly pursuing a
totally different purpose in its strategic plan, which focuses on the system
rather than the students, as called for by law).
The source of PASSHE’s institutional corruption is
found not in the 14 universities but rather in PASSHE’s fifteen governance bodies—especially the Board
of Governors and to a lesser extent in the fourteen Councils of Trustees—which
operate principally to advance political rather than educational goals.
Corruption
Begins With Conspiracy
As noted in the
Harvard study, it is difficult to even measure corruption—much less prosecute
it after the fact or prevent it before the fact—because by its very nature it is
always conducted in secret!
But even before corruption
can occur, the individuals involved must first engage in a “conspiracy,” which is
also conducted in secret. Findlaw.com defines
conspiracy by saying that it exists “when two or more people agree to commit
almost any unlawful act, and then take some action toward its completion.”
“If
you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
Anonymous
Because of the
inherent difficulty in documenting something which those involved in conspiracy
and corruption are taking great pains to keep secret, a number of different
measures of corruption have been implemented over the years to produce the various
published rankings of State corruption.
One measure of
corruption used by the Department of Justice is the number of national prosecutions.
The DOJ reports that “in the last two decades more than 20,000 public officials
and private individuals have been convicted for crimes related to corruption
and more than 5,000 are awaiting trial.”
The number of corruption
convictions, based on a “beyond-a-reasonable-doubt” standard, would seem
to account for only the tiny tip of a very large iceberg, meaning that the
25,000 figure cited by the DOJ might actually imply that the number of actual
corruption perpetrators who remain un-convicted, or even un-prosecuted, could
easily be 100 times larger, amounting to 2.5 million individuals or more.
A better measure of
corruption may be obtained from surveys to reporters who cover the institutions
and the officials who are in a position to engage in corruption. The Harvard study was done by means of such a
survey for the reason that “Reporters have a better knowledge of state
governments and spend a great deal of time observing the state officials and
interacting with them.”
The Harvard Study “Corruption
Report Card” employed a five-point scale as follows: 1) Not at all common; 2) Slightly common; 3)
Moderately common; 4) Very common; and 5) Extremely common
Pennsylvania’s “Corruption” Report Card
Illegal Corruption:
Executive Branch (2.5 - Between slightly common and moderately common);
Legislative Branch (4 - Very common); and Judicial Branch (2 - Slightly common).
Legal Corruption:
Executive Branch (3 - Moderately common); Legislative Branch (4.5 - Between
very common and extremely common); Judicial Branch (3 - Moderately common).
Summary
The Harvard Study
concludes with listings of the “Most Corrupt” and “Least Corrupt” states in
America.
When it comes to Illegal
Corruption, Pennsylvania is ranked as one of the six Most Corrupt States.
When it comes to
Legal Corruption, Pennsylvania is ranked as one of the seven Most Corrupt
States.
To be continued.
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