Corruption and police recruits in Ghana: A qualitative longitudinal study

Police corruption is a transhistorical problem. It constitutes a subject of great criminological significance, given the threats to the rule of law, human rights, and the effective functioning of the criminal justice system. The question of how police officers come to view corruption as an acceptable course of action is an important one. Several police scholars have examined police-related socialisation processes and their related culture. It is from this perspective that police recruits offer a unique opportunity to study police corruption. Paradoxically, despite the longstanding, pervasive nature of police corruption in Africa, police recruits have rarely been studied and, while police researchers have studied this phenomenon in the global north, very few have adopted a longitudinal approach for this purpose. As Charman (2017, p.3) recently observed, “Longitudinal research in this area of policing cultures has also been a rarity”. To the best of my knowledge, this dissertation represents the first longitudinal study of police recruits in Africa. It was based on two waves of interviews. Wave 1, which combined interviews with participant observation, took place during a period of classroom training at a police training school in Ghana. Wave 2 focused on the experiences of fresh constables, shortly after graduating. Of the 75 individuals who were interviewed during Wave 1, 29 were re- interviewed during Wave 2. This thesis examined the participants’ motivations for joining the police service, the nature of the corrupt opportunities to which they were exposed, and their reactions to corruption. I sought to understand how police corruption was organised, the actors involved, as well as how the recruits were socialised not only into the police but also into police corruption. Several important findings emerged from this research. First, the officers reported experiencing extensive corruption among officers in their workplace, as well as between 2 officers and civilians. Second, although 28 of the 29 individuals who were interviewed in both waves of this study self-reported involvement in corruption, I differentiate between officers who felt conflicted about corruption and those who felt morally at ease with it. Both groups deployed various strategies when faced with corruption. Third, whistleblowing emerged as a complex phenomenon, as some officers feared not merely physical retaliation and career damage, but also supernatural reprisals. The findings reinforce the truism that policing reflects the socio-economic, cultural, and political contexts in which it occurs. The implications of the findings are explored

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Sowatey, Emmanuel

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tankebe, Justice

• Police recruits
• Police corruption
• Ethics
• Socialisation
• Ghana

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/e50469a3-bbe6-4884-9bd7-875bb49daa72/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.116226

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/380661