Definitions
Bribery infers an “illicit exchange” in which a person or company offers a government or public official, officer, or employee valuable items, such as gifts, money, property, etc., in return for contracts, services, or other treatment (Noonan 1984).
Introduction
Bribery is often deemed illegal by society, ethically unacceptable, and judged as morally questionable due to the harm that it causes (D’Andrade 1985; Green 2005; Horder 2011; Noonan 1984). The premise of this offense is that “…accepting a bribe involves the violation of an implicit or explicit promise or understanding associated with one’s office or role and that, therefore, accepting a bribe is always prima facie wrong” (Carson 1987, p.). Laws against bribery, that is, making bribes illegal, are tied to moral or ethical violations caused by the bribe act itself, namely, corruption. Consider the comparison of offering a free car to a politician versus a private business owner in exchange for hiring your nephew....
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References
Carson, T. L. (1987). Bribery and implicit agreements: A reply to Philips. Journal of Business Ethics, 6(2), 123–125.
Cornell Law School. (n.d.). Terry v. Ohio. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/392/1
D’Andrade, K. (1985). Bribery. Journal of Business Ethics, 4(4), 239–248.
Green, S. P. (2005). What’s wrong with bribery? In R. A. Duff & S. P. Green (Eds.), Defining crimes: Essays on the criminal Law’s special part. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horder, J. (2011). Bribery as a form of criminal wrongdoing. Law Quarterly Review, 127, 37–54. London: Sweet & Maxwell.
Noonan, J. T., Jr. (1984). Bribes: The intellectual history of a moral idea. New York: Macmillan.
Paternoster, R. (2010). How much do we really know about criminal deterrence? The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 100, 765–824.
Stein, A. (2012). Corrupt intentions: Bribery, unlawful gratuity, and honest-services fraud. Accessed at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://search.yahoo.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1668&context=lcp
Wollan, M. (2016). How to make a citizen’s arrest. New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/how-to-make-a-citizens-arrest.html
Further Readings
Lambsdorff, J. G. (2007). The institutional economics of corruption and reform: Theory evidence and policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Langsted, L. B. (2009). Bribery, bribery across borders and the like from a Danish perspective. Scandinavian Studies in Law, 54(13), 247–268.
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Grossberger, K.J. (2019). Bribery. In: Shapiro, L., Maras, MH. (eds) Encyclopedia of Security and Emergency Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_6-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_6-2
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