Katarina Jacobsson
Head of Department | Professor | PhD | Reader in Sociology
Mutor och moral – motstridiga versioner i svenska rättsfall
Author
Summary, in English
Seven legal cases of bribery serve as a starting point. They are mainly cases of what would be called petty corruption. The material consists of retrospective interviews with the parties involved (people who reported the matter, policemen, prosecutors, people sentenced with bribery) as well as court records in each case.
When counteracting accusations of bribery, interviewee draw on culturally established knowledge of a ”real” bribe: it is given in secret, it consists of a large amount of money, it is supposed to generate favours, it is offered with an ulterior motive of favours, it involves a particular order (first bribery, then favours), and it attracts dishonest persons.
People who are found guilty of bribery present another picture. Assertions and proofs of one’s honest intentions and honourable character are put forward in elaborated accounts. Furthermore, one suggests reasons for ”how this could happen to me”, i.e. other people’s malice, bad luck or becoming the victim of a particularly zealous prosecutor. By illustrating their accounts with identifying as well as contrasting comparisons, the interviewees construct a version of events far from the one claimed by the prosecutor.
Not only the interviewees who were found guilty of bribery seem to be compelled to explain their actions, but also the prosecutors and those who reported the matter to the police. When cases are described as morally ambiguous the prosecutors refer to rules and laws, thus restricting their options to a minimum. Accounts of this sort imply a reification of the law and picture the judicial organisation as an unstoppable automatic machine processing its material until it is done.
Department/s
- School of Social Work
Publishing year
2005
Language
Swedish
Publication/Series
Research reports / Network for Research in Criminology and Deviant Behaviour at Lund University
Document type
Report
Publisher
[Publisher information missing]
Topic
- Social Work
Keywords
- comparisons
- rhetoric
- neutralizing techniques
- accounts
- legal cases
- bribery
- prosecutor
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1104-1153