By: Staff Writer
December 13, 2022
A noted academic said that where there are no jobs and people have to make due in order to survive, corruption will always be an ever present risk in the Caribbean on top of the “lawful, awful” laws.
Nikos Passas, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, said at the Caribbean Development Bank’s Conference on: Corruption, Compliance and Cybercrime (3C’s) that: “The most important governance challenge is the disparity between what is legal and what is right and there are two areas where we can see this disparity, the lawful but awful activities… and the unlawful but developmentally useful, or even ethical acts.
He continued, “So consider this picture, this is no way to trade your car, it’s not going to last very long. It’s also very dangerous for all these people to be on it at the same time.
Consider, however, there are people all coming from a village where there are no jobs, and there is no public transportation and “this is the only way that they have to go from home to work, bring some food to the table, and medicine to the sick. So if you enforce the law very strictly, and take the car or fine them or detain them, fragile communities and people suffer. So in the same way, you cannot fight corruption on an empty stomach and this is the importance of context where the material conditions are not aligned with exactly what we are trying to do.”
Essentially more resources need to be brought to the poorer classes to make their lives comfortable so little infractions can be acted upon as they come and they will become less frequent and more of an anomaly than the standard.
Mr Passas also said: “On the other side, we have acts that are lawful but awful, and we’re talking about practices that are allowed by the law, subsidized by the government or at least encouraged. But when you look at their effects, they are detrimental and sometimes worse than organized crime and what you have to realize that sometimes the law is bad. It is decided and made by corrupt lawmakers and dictators and influenced by ruthless corporations and when you’re trying to do comparative work, you also have to face the reality of asymetric laws, different standards, and different provisions from place to place.”
An essential part of a lawful but awful law is with regard to mispricing certain services in the government. For example, when companies shift the cost on to the society for things they should have greater care in dealing with and the government lets them get away with shifting the cost of certain precautions. This is a form of corruption and a lawful awful that must be rooted out, Mr Passas explained.
He added: “The bottom line is that the more of such companies or industries flourish, the more societies suffer, the more societies are worse off and the externalization of costs are shifted primarily to the shoulders of the weakest and least privileged groups or countries. And the blame is also externalized the practices are considered natural or inevitable, or part of our economic system and critique therefore, is muted. But when you look at the consequences, they are very severe environmental problems,” that can occur as a result.