Identifying individual conditions for being sanctioned for corruption: the case of the Brazilian federal executive

The theoretical debate regarding integrity at the individual level in both public and private sectors has been dominated primarily by analogies of “bad apples,” “bad barrels,” and “bad orchards.” When looking at corruption in the police services, for example, criminologists tend to reject the hypothesis that the issue is limited to a few rogue members (Newburn 2015), and focus not on the individual but on institutional failure (Newburn 2015; Punch 2009). Indeed, the notion of bad apples can be dangerously misleading in tackling structural or institutional issues as it implies that, other than investigating and sanctioning individuals who engage in misconduct, very little is required to keep organizations functioning properly. However, identifying the characteristics of bureaucrats who are likely to be implicated in wrongdoing may reveal much about how accountability systems work. Moreover, identifying and discussing whether – and, if so, why – disciplinary and internal affairs departments have been punishing, for example, more men than women, more experienced bureaucrats than inexperienced ones, and more career civil servants than those in positions of trust remains an unexplored research topic not only in Brazil but globally. This study tries to fill this gap by looking at the distribution of 5,000 administrative penalties imposed between 2003 and 2014 in the federal executive in Brazil (68% of them for corruption-related acts), and analyzing which civil servants are most likely to be sanctioned for corruption and which conditions differentiate them from those punished for other serious offences. Statistical analyses were performed on the subsample of sanctioned civil servants using the variables of gender, job tenure, status (career civil servant or occupant of a position of trust), and gross earnings. Analyses also included qualitative data gathered through 24 semi-structured interviews with civil servants directly involved with disciplinary sanctions. The study findings showed that those punished most often for corruption were men and those who were not in the first five years of their careers. Holding a special position or earning a bonus also increased the odds of being sanctioned for corruption as well as working for specific government bodies such as the traffic police.