THE APPLE DOES NOT FALL FAR FROM THE TREE: CAN SOCIETY CORRUPT POLICE OFFICIALS?

It is argued that police officers commonly present what they consider to be anacceptable face to researchers regarding the cause and extent of police corruptionwithin their respective law enforcement agencies. This ‘self-censorship’ can be achallenge to obtaining a reliable view of police officers’ occupational, informaland personal perceptions. Empirical research on police corruptive practices inSouth Africa highlights the problem which seems to be persistent in the SouthAfrican Police Service (SAPS). Though a number of factors combine to makereliable estimates of the number of officials engaging in misconduct difficult toobtain, the sheer number of individuals working in the SAPS suggest the scope ofthe problem. In order to get beyond some of these familiar tropes given the stigmaattached to corruption, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted withkey informants from the public in the three provinces of South Africa namely;Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape to solicit their views regarding theconcept ‘corrupting society’ as to determine, if society does corrupt the police.The findings indicated that while some pockets of excellence have been attainedtowards improving police-public relations, the other ‘side of the coin’ poses risksto the SAPS as corrupt friendship bonds with friends and associates within thecommunities the police serve, causes profound organisational problems to reducepolice corruption. In the face of recent media scrutiny regarding how at thenational level, some of the former National Commissioners were implicated bythe media to have received kickbacks due to their close associations with someinfluential families, implies a concern of far greater complexity than the ordinaryexchanges of accusation and defence regarding a ‘corrupting society’ and ‘corrupted police officials’ are likely to reveal. The author provided possiblerecommendations emanating from the findings