A new approach needed to reduce corruption–CaPRI

DESPITE MANY anti-corruption laws and institutions in Jamaica (eight acts and eight state institutions), the perception remains one of pervasive corruption. Examining this paradox, the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI) has suggested, in a study undertaken in partnership with the National Integrity Action (NIA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a new approach.

Traditionally, Jamaica’s approach to restraining corruption has been the use of legislation and enforcement – designing rules of behaviour for public officials and attempting to police fidelity to those rules. The limitations of this approach are apparent from the low number of corruption prosecutions and the ninth ranking of Jamaica out of 11 English-speaking Caribbean countries in the 2016 Corruption Perception Index.

GAPS AND WEAKNESSES

Towards improving what already exists, notwithstanding the large amount of legislative and institutional effort already dedicated to stymieing corruption, well-known gaps and weaknesses do exist and should be addressed. Parenthetically but importantly, in CaPRI’s earlier communication on this, our spokespersons were interpreted, when describing a large anti-corruption legislative framework, as claiming that said framework is adequate for the task; it is demonstrably not and in the context of the single anti-corruption entity being instituted, it is an opportune time for these legislative gaps to be addressed, particularly in relation to the new agency having independent investigative and prosecutorial powers.