Hard Responses to Corruption: Penal Standards and the Repression of Corruption in Britain, France and Portugal

Abstract

Despite its difficulties and inconsistencies in framing those practices and conducts recently unveiled by the press and judicial investigations which have caused considerable public discontent, the penal definition of corruption still highlights an interesting conceptual diversity across space and time that should not be overlooked. Most official discussions about and references to corruption and its volume are still framed within these hard parameters. It is, therefore, important to look at the intricacies of corruption as a crime in order to understand the virtues and failures of national repressive efforts. While crime statistics are of limited use for its measurement, they can nevertheless help to interpret the way corruption has been treated through repressive instruments cross-nationally over a period of time. The aim of this paper is to assess the dynamics of the various processes of setting and revising penal standards to the conduct of office holders and the results observable from the application of corruption and related offences across countries with different legal traditions.