Protector or predator? - Institute for Security Studies

2 Defining police
corruption
Public sector corruption is broadly defined as the abuse of official power or authority
for personal gain. 4 Police, however, are in a unique position when it comes
to committing corrupt acts, because unlike other public servants, police officials
have a monopoly on the state-sanctioned use of force. They also have powers that
allow them to deny people their freedom, and they have access to both public and
private places, and information not readily available to other civil servants.
Definitions of police corruption that emerged in the sixties and seventies
defined it as any ‘deviant, dishonest, improper, unethical or criminal behaviour
by a police official’. 5 However, definitions such as this do not distinguish between
corrupt acts committed in the course of duty and other criminal acts. This means
that there would be no way to differentiate the abuse of power issue, for example,
between a police official who accepts a bribe from a criminal suspect and one
who steals a cellphone from his colleague.
More recent definitions state that for an act to be labelled as police corruption,
it must involve the abuse of power specific to the occupation of policing.
Therefore, it is an act of police corruption if a police official steals property from
a crime scene while investigating a crime, since the official would only have been
able to commit the theft because of his or her authority to be present at the scene.
Monograph 182 5