APPENDIX 15
Memorandum submitted by Professor Maurice
Punch
I have been interested in police corruption
and control in the police organization for many years and have
researched the area, published on it, taught senior officers on
aspects of it relevant to their functioning and made presentations
at a number of international conferences. In relation to this
interest I have visited the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland
(hereafter "PONI") on several occasions; I gave a public
seminar, was involved in a training session for new investigators,
presented a paper at a plenary session at the international conference
"Policing the Police" in 2003 and travelled to Belfast
in 2001 to invite the Ombudsman and several of her staff to an
international meeting in the Netherlands.
I believe that this had provided me with a reasonable
insight into the functioning of PONI. To place that judgement
into a context it is first necessary to say a few words about
police corruption and the need for "strong" oversight.
The police organization is the primary public
agency representing the state in the lives of citizens; in western-style
democracies, for example, the police institution is ostensibly
subject to accountability through adherence to the rule of law
and due process; deviation from the ideal of an accountable, public
service reflects then on the legitimacy of the state. Yet in studies
of policing in numerous countries there is evidence of deviation
from rules and laws by officers; this may be related to disciplinary
offences, crimes (excessive violence, abuse of human rights, burglary,
etc) and "corruption" in its many forms (but principally
financial arrangements for not enforcing the law). These practices
raise some of the most profound issues in policing: why do police
officers, who are meant to abide by the law, break the law; why
do police organizations seem unable to anticipate and to combat
corruption; how do officers evade accountability by rule-bending;
and the perennial point—"who controls the controllers"?
In the past corruption has frequently been
associated with bribery; in a valuable literature overview Newburn
(1999) maintains that conventional corruption is found in virtually
all forces, at every level of the organization and in all countries
at some time; in short, corruption is an inherent and universal
facet of policing and cannot simply be the product of some "bad
apples". This in turn raises questions about the wider institutional
context in which corruption occurs (Punch: 2003). From this broader
perspective financial transactions are only part of deviant police
behaviour and only part of their interaction with those who pay
"graft"; I prefer to widen the concept to represent
the broader spectrum of police deviance and crime where officers
abuse the trust in them to engage in serious offences against
citizens, suspects and criminals. Corruption in this wider sense
of "police crime" can be linked to three levels.
Firstly, the police may collude with external
groups such as politicians, and/or organized criminals; this may
take the form of assassinations, involvement in the drug trade
and granting immunity to members of the political elite or criminal
gangs. Although we may associate this with less developed countries,
say in South America with police death squads, it is the case
that the Stevens Report noted that certain segments of the police
organization in Northern Ireland had cooperated with British security
services to leak information about people suspected of supporting
the Republican cause to Protestant, paramilitary groups who then
murdered innocent citizens. In this category certain segments
of the police apparatus have been "captured" or influenced
by external groups and collude with them in illegal conduct.
Secondly, most research attention to corruption
has been paid to practices that are largely internal to the police
organization. These can be roughly classified into four categories:
— "Grass eaters" accept the
perks of free meals, gifts and goods which are offered to them
by legitimate and illegitimate enterprises and indulge in fairly
low-level corruption (turning a blind eye to offences or offering
protection).
— The "meat eaters" are the
proactive entrepreneurs of corruption who set out actively and
even aggressively to regulate the "graft" by effectively
licensing criminal enterprises, by demanding money and by cooperating
with favoured criminal groups.
— "Noble cause" corruption
represents activities where officers convince themselves that
in order to secure a conviction they have to bend the rules; there
is no corruptor, no direct financial gain and no relationship
with organized criminals but rather a determination to achieve
results. In Britain a series of cases of miscarriages of justice
were uncovered, involving suspected terrorists, where detectives
had falsified statements, interfered with evidence, pressurized
suspects to give false confessions and had lied in court. Although
the justification was that some of these were high profile cases
it also later emerged that the deviant techniques were employed
in routine cases (particularly with vulnerable suspects).
— The fourth category relates to the
purely "criminal conduct" of super-predators where the
officers have, in effect, become criminals and are into violence,
drug dealing, stealing from suspects, torture, burglary and even
sexual offences.
Thirdly, police corruption when exposed may
lead to scandals and to reform (Sherman: 1978); this may in turn
attract attention to deviance in the wider system. The miscarriages
of justice in Britain led to criticisms of the judiciary, the
appeals system and weaknesses in the use of forensic evidence;
this in turn fostered major legislative reform. And in Belgium
the turbulence around the police and justice failures in the investigation
and prosecution of Marc Dutroux, a convicted rapist who abducted
young girls of whom four died, led to an upsurge of popular demands
not just for reform of the police and judicial apparatus but of
the broader political and societal system.
In short, we have to accept that:
— police corruption takes many forms;
— is a reoccurring and resilient element
in police functioning;
— can be highly pernicious;
— and revelations about it can have
considerable implications beyond the police organization itself.
It cannot be dismissed as episodic and cannot
be seen as easily dealt with by a "quick-fix" response
from reformist senior officers.
These are vitally important issues because the
police have the power to interfere directly in citizens' lives,
can deprive people of their freedom and have the monopoly over
violence. Serious deviance within the police organization raises
fundamental questions about the accountability of this key institution
in democratic society. It is clearly unacceptable that people
are degraded and abused, that they are denied their rights, that
they are imprisoned on false evidence and that criminals can purchase
immunity. Yet scandals and reports have exposed units where officers
became violent, stole and recycled drugs, came to arrangements
with informants, were into heavy drinking and/or drug use and
operated closely with criminal gangs. They had, in effect, become
criminals. Reactive and bureaucratic internal control, the rewarding
and encouraging of active "thief-catchers", peer-group
loyalty and the code of silence all contribute to the structural
and cultural features of policing that enhance deviant behaviour
and make its exposure problematic.
But, if corruption is a continuous occupational
and organizational hazard for the police, can anything be done
about it? There is clearly no magic bullet; but there has been
considerable attention paid to combating corruption and enhancing
police integrity in recent years. The message is clear: a professional
police organization that wishes to function with integrity requires
strong leadership; senior officers are needed who understand the
primary processes and the bag of tricks used to camouflage deviant
work; of great importance is assertive supervision at the front-line,
mechanisms of transparency and proactive internal control. Internal
Affairs or Professional Standards Departments have often become
robust in their methods by treating bent cops as equivalent to
serious criminals and pursuing them with covert units employing
the methods of surveillance, telephone taps, cultivating informants
and integrity testing. Persistent, well-resourced, intelligence-led
strategies are needed to anticipate and locate deviant activities
and to tackle them as serious crime within the police organization.
Although the police organization has learned
a great deal about the prevention and internal tackling of police
deviance it does, nevertheless, face a critical issue of accountability
and credibility in that there is no external agency that investigates
police misconduct. Given everything that has been said about the
seriousness of police misbehaviour it could be argued that it
is unacceptable that the police organization investigates itself;
even if an investigation by another force is conducted with exemplary
professionalism it can still not be considered fully independent.
A crucial feature of external control, and of
its legitimacy and credibility, is the presence of an external
oversight agency with teeth. But the history of external complaints
agencies has often shown institutions that were understaffed and
under-funded, that could not initiate investigations themselves,
that only could monitor the complaint procedure and not the original
incident itself and that were not taken seriously by the police;
indeed they were dependent on the police for cooperation and information
(and in some countries were virulently resisted). There was a
danger of co-optation, manipulation and lack of credibility. This
could be called a "weak" style of external oversight.
But it could be maintained that citizens who
face police deviance need to have recourse to an impartial and
independent ombudsman-style agency that takes their complaints
seriously, investigates them, relays any deficiencies uncovered
back to the force and, where appropriate, prepares the case for
prosecution. After all we are not talking about a complaint against
an impolite gas-fitter from the gas company. We are talking about
the abuse of power and the abuse of citizens' and suspects' rights
and their well-being.
It is in the light of this essential analysis
that PONI needs to be located as a model of "strong"
external control. Strong external control requires independence,
resources, powers, legitimacy, credibility and leadership.
— PONI is, as far as I know, the only
independent and impartial oversight agency for the police institution
that takes all the complaints against it and investigates all
of them; but independence and impartiality are not just characteristics
that you are granted but also elements that you have to earn and
maintain; I would argue that the record of PONI has established
and displayed its independence and impartiality (with broad public
satisfaction). It has also been provided with teeth by being able
to mount an investigation without a complaint, to work retrospectively
and to be able to demand full cooperation from the police.
— Essential to the success of such
an agency is resources to attract first-rate people (investigators
and other experts) and to establish a state of the art infrastructure.
The quality of investigations, of publications and information
to the public and of media presentations has to be very high.
The legitimacy and credibility of the agency depends on continually
producing quality work that reassures the public that investigations
have been conducted with the utmost thoroughness and professionalism.
— I am convinced that PONI can withstand
the most critical scrutiny in terms of legitimacy and credibility.
For an oversight agency has itself to be accountable; there has
to be control of the controllers' controllers!
— Of essential concern is that a strong
oversight agency possesses a visible, vocal and resilient leader
of unimpeachable quality and integrity; I believe that the personality
and qualities of Mrs O'Loan have been instrumental in establishing
PONI as a unique and valuable model; she has provided consistent
leadership, attracted excellent and dedicated staff, has been
continually engaged in public debates and has successfully managed
a powerful team performance.
— In this light it is important to
mention that PONI had a broader mandate than just being an investigatory
agency of largely local significance; for PONI conducts research,
publishes its data, makes policy recommendations to the police
and takes part in international meetings. In 2002 Mrs O'Loan and
Mr David Wood (Head of Investigations) took part in the Second
Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and Promoting Integrity in
the Hague; there was considerable interest in their presentations
and the example of PONI was the only agency to be mentioned—as
innovative and promising—in the final overview speech before
ministers from more than one hundred countries. The international
conference on "Policing the Police" in 2003 showed that
there was great interest in this topic and that PONI could attract
leading academics, policy makers and practitioners to debate together
on fundamental matters relating to policing and oversight.
— Finally, the functioning of PONI
had to be placed in the context of Northern Ireland where the
police force has been subjected to considerable change. One can
imagine that the relationship between the RUC / PSNI had not always
been easy; but it could be maintained that PONI was needed by
the police to re-establish its legitimacy and its credibility.
This has made PONI one of the central pillars in reforming the
police in Northern Ireland. In the last resort both the police
and PONI are in the business of building trust.
The implication of this, I would maintain, is
that society should not be satisfied with "weak" external
control of the police based on compromises; in that sense PONI
has a much broader significance ranging beyond its role in Northern
Ireland. PONI has established a model which convinces one that
the public, and the police, have the right to a fully independent,
impartial oversight agency with resources and sharp teeth. Anything
else is second best; and, given the vital issues that control
over the police poses, that is just not good enough in a democratic
society based on the rule of law and public accountability.
22 March 2004
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