International Report on Judicial Corruption

The international organization Transparency International recently released its Global Corruption Report 2007.

This year's report takes a close look at judicial corruption around the world. Judicial corruption can involve outright bribery or political interference in the judicial process.

"(A) corrupt judiciary erodes the international community’s ability to prosecute transnational crime and inhibits access to justice and redress for human rights violations. It undermines economic growth by damaging the trust of the investment community, and impedes efforts to reduce poverty (...)".

"TI’s latest global survey of attitudes towards corruption reveals that in more than twenty-five countries, at least one in ten households had to pay a bribe to get access to justice. In a further twenty countries, more than three in ten households reported that bribery was involved in securing access to justice or a 'fair' outcome in court. In Albania, Greece, Indonesia, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Peru, Taiwan and Venezuela, the figure was even higher".

Earlier Library Boy posts about corruption include:

• Political Corruption Resources (April 8, 2005): "Canada has been rocked by recent devastating testimony at the Gomery Commission hearings about alleged corruption in the administration of federal government advertising/sponsorship budgets. Many resources exist out there to track the phenomenon of political corruption on the international scale."
• Global Corruption Report 2006 (February 4, 2006): "Transparency International, an international non-governmental organization dedicated to combating corruption across the world, has just released its Global Corruption Report 2006. The major focus of this year's report is the impact of corruption in the healthcare sector in developing countries."
• 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index (November 8, 2006): "The international NGO Transparency International just released its 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index, 'a composite index that draws on multiple expert opinion surveys that poll perceptions of public sector corruption in 163 countries around the world (...) It scores countries on a scale from zero to ten, with zero indicating high levels of perceived corruption and ten indicating low levels of perceived corruption'."
• Government Ethics Watchdog Site Voted World's Best Blog (November 14, 2006): "The U.S.-based Sunlight Foundation website has been voted the world's best blog by an international jury put together by Deutsche Welle, the German international broadcasting service. DW, as it is known, is the equivalent of Radio Canada International (...) The Sunlight Foundation was founded in early 2006 to help U.S. citizens harness the power of digital technology to 'help reduce corruption, ensure greater transparency and accountability by government, and foster public trust in the vital institutions of democracy' according to the Foundation website."