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Corruption

Materials

• Is This Corruption?
• Culture of Corruption a research study on corruption looking at the number of unpaid parking tickets for violations by different countries' UN missions. The study then develops an index of corruption based on abuse of diplomatic immunity. You will probably only want to print and hand-out the country table.
• Questions for Discussion
• Victimless Crime

First, hand out the Is This Corruption? worksheet and have students discuss the situations and decide if they are corrupt or not. The list is meant to get more serious as it goes on. This can be done in small groups with students reporting back, or as a whole class. Make sure to have students give reasons for deciding if these are corrupt activities or not. Encourage students to think about different circumstances, and make sure to get everyone's opinions as this activity can lead to a lot of discussion as people agree and disagree. You can also play devil's advocate to encourage kids to speak up and analyze their position.
Then ask students which situations they believe are legal in their country, and if there is any relationship between legality and corruption. I.e. can there be legalized corruption? Finally ask students if they know of any other examples of corruption? What forms of corruption are most common in their country.

Once you have gone through situations, ask students to define corruption. Write on the board anything they say. They may say, or you can encourage them to include: illegal, paying someone to do their job, paying extra because you are not connected, getting benefits from your job or family position, personally getting paid from business contracts, making fake documents.

Then introduce the Culture of Corruption study by explaining that two scientists, Ray Fishman and Edward Miguel did a study of corruption by looking at how often UN diplomats abused their diplomatic immunity. Explain diplomatic immunity if necessary and make it clear that diplomats do not have to pay parking tickets. Then explain that this study decided that that was a perfect definition of corruption: how often diplomats abuse their immunity by parking illegally. Ask students if they agree with this definition. If you have a lot of grumbling you might draw a parallel to a rich and powerful businessman never being brought to court for crimes because of his job. Or some other more extreme form of abuse of position. Ask students which countries they think were most corrupt, least corrupt and where they think their own country ended up. Then hand out the country table and let students discuss it amongst themselves. Especially ask why they think some countries are more corrupt than others.

Now I hand out the Questions for Discussion and have students discuss them in pairs. The idea is to push them toward thinking deeply about corruption. What causes it? How do we stop it? After these questions have been exhausted, hand out the short story Victimless Crime about a man who finds out who suffers from corruption. Have students read the story and discuss whether they believe corruption is really a victimless crime or not. Ask them if the story is believable or not. Do they have similar experiences? Or have they heard of such things happening? Explain that the story is fictional but is based on real events that have happened to real people.

This is a class that usually runs out of time before all the students have had their say.

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