Over a decade since the Open Government Partnership was formed to promote more inclusive, transparent, and participatory governments around the world, the challenge of corruption has only grown in importance. Globally, every nation, every population confronts increasingly novel and seemingly intractable issues as technology-fueled disinformation, nation state malignant influence operations, and criminal enterprises enable corruption to spread and evolve. The rise of authoritarianism has roots in the corrosive impact of corruption on democracy and the rule of law. In short, the need for renewed, effective measures to combat corruption is more salient than ever.
The Biden Administration agreed, memorializing the importance of effectively combatting corruption into the National Strategy on Countering Corruption. The Strategy prioritizes modernization of the US government architecture to combat corruption, more effective collection and use of data, and improved coordination across the proverbial board.
The justice sector has a complex relationship to corruption. It is one of the primary venues in which corruption is fought directly, through prosecutions of incidents of corrupt behavior, administrative regulation, and enforcement of corruption prevention mechanisms. At the same time, the justice sector is not immune to corruption’s pernicious influence. And, in a system that depends on public legitimacy, the justice sector is particularly affected by the destructive impact of corruption. It is thus particularly important for justice sector experts and reform managers to possess, and continue to deepen, an in-depth, nuanced understanding of the entrenched, resilient, and systemic nature of corruption in society.
To effectively implement the Strategy, the justice sector workforce must understand the causes and consequences of corruption – the focus of this two-day training. Participants will explore justice systems and systems of corruption and how they interact. Participants will work through practical exercises to develop their own detailed understanding of corruption and grapple with how it manifests in their country of focus. Discussions and examples will challenge participants to broaden how they understand corruption and account for corruption in their program design work based on the analysis performed during this training session. Participants will leave the training with a more sophisticated understanding of what corruption is, the difficulties in identifying corruption, how corruption acts as a spoiler to rule of law, and how corruption evolves to resist reform efforts.