Abstract:

It is argued that police officers commonly present what they consider to be an acceptable face to researchers regarding the cause and extent of police corruption within their respective law enforcement agencies. This ‘self-censorship’ can be a challenge to obtaining a reliable view of police officers’ occupational, informal and personal perceptions. Empirical research on police corruptive practices in South Africa highlights the problem which seems to be persistent in the South African Police Service (SAPS). Though a number of factors combine to make reliable estimates of the number of officials engaging in misconduct difficult to obtain, the sheer number of individuals working in the SAPS suggest the scope of the problem. In order to get beyond some of these familiar tropes given the stigma attached to corruption, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants from the public in the three provinces of South Africa namely; Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape to solicit their views regarding the concept ‘corrupting society’ as to determine, if society does corrupt the police. The findings indicated that while some pockets of excellence have been attained towards improving police-public relations, the other ‘side of the coin’ poses risks to the SAPS as corrupt friendship bonds with friends and associates within the communities the police serve, causes profound organisational problems to reduce police corruption. In the face of recent media scrutiny regarding how at the national level, some of the former National Commissioners were implicated by the media to have received kickbacks due to their close associations with some influential families, implies a concern of far greater complexity than the ordinary exchanges of accusation and defence regarding a ‘corrupting society’ and ‘corrupted police officials’ are likely to reveal. The author provided possible recommendations emanating from the findings.

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