Accountability » Corruption
The fight against judicial corruption
DPLF has taken on the task of analyzing the phenomenon of corruption in the judicial branch and coming up with proposals for preventing and eliminating it.
For DPLF, corruption does not consist only of individuals receiving inappropriate financial benefits but also encompasses a range of actions and behaviors that jeopardize the justice system’s impartiality.
The importance of the justice system’s role in fighting corruption is obvious—it is the motor driving the state’s machinery for punishing corrupt behavior. The judicial branch provides a sort of institutional medicine that helps heal governmental bodies, but for it to be effective, it must not have been contaminated by the same disease it is meant to be curing. Thus, the prevention of distortions and irregularities in judicial activities should be a priority on a government’s agenda.
No matter the form judicial corruption takes, it can be said to exist whenever a judicial official commits an act that compromises impartiality in a case in order to obtain illegitimate benefits for him/herself or for others, including the parties in the case.
DPLF has been working to promote analysis and discussion on judicial corruption through a number of different efforts, including:
- Judicial corruption in Central America and a November 2007 DPLF publication, Evaluation of Judicial Corruption in Central America and Panama and the Mechanisms to Combat It.
- A Guide to Rapid Assessment and Policymaking for the Control of Corruption in Latin American Justice Systems—information on the project and the resulting document that was published in September 2007.
