Posted on: Tuesday, June 4, 2002
ISLAND VOICES
Corruption was unavoidable
By David T. Johnson
Assistant professor of sociology at the University of Hawai'i
A federal grand jury has indicted eight current or retired inspectors of the Honolulu Liquor Commission. They are accused of accepting cash bribes from hostess clubs and strip bars to the tune of $11,500. The payoffs, which purportedly occurred 58 times, average $200 per bribe and about $1,400 per inspector.
We must assume, of course, that these defendants are innocent until proven guilty, but if the allegations do prove true, will anyone be surprised? After all, something similar happened in 1989, when 10 Honolulu liquor inspectors were fired or suspended for being on the take.
More generally, law enforcement scandals in the United States have chronically involved the regulation of vice. Vice has several salient features that help to explain why it is a hotbed of corruption. First, there is rarely a complainant when, say, a prostitute turns a trick. Since few people feel victimized, police intervention is seldom compelled by a specific request.
In addition, huge numbers of people are involved in vice crimes — including, no doubt, many of Hawai'i's most reputable residents. Whether seekers or purveyors of vice, these people think of themselves only technically as criminals. They may be a little ashamed of their acts, but for the most part, they regard their behavior as nobody's business but their own.
Finally, the public's huge demand for illegal pleasure creates mountains of money and major opportunities and temptations for corruption.
When legal prohibition is coupled with high demand and only a fitful sense of moral guilt, corruption becomes almost inevitable.
Hawai'i officials are right to condemn misconduct of this kind. As U.S. Attorney Ed Kubo has said, corruption is one of government's worst diseases, not least because it undermines the public trust on which good government depends.
Yet the proposals floated to fix this problem are unlikely to have the intended effect.
Kubo maintains that better "protocols and procedures" are needed to monitor the people who enforce vice laws.
Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris wants to shift enforcement duties to the police, and City Councilman John Henry Felix agrees. Moreover, Felix seems to think that if vice enforcers receive more training and higher pay, corruption would decline.
Fat chance. Though these officials are right to re-examine the city's failed approach to vice enforcement, their own proposals fail to address the major source of this problem.
Our vice enforcement laws, which criminalize behavior that causes little harm to others, are the most important immediate cause of corruption of the kind seen in this case. The main effect of shifting vice enforcement responsibilities to the police will be to expose them to the same opportunities and temptations for corruption that Liquor Commission inspectors now face. If the mayor's proposal succeeds, it will only be a matter of time before we open our morning Advertiser to find headlines proclaiming the problem of police corruption.
If the state is serious about reducing corruption, it should adopt a different approach to governing the pursuit of pleasure. The watchwords of that approach should be regulation, not prohibition, and harm reduction, not moral crusade.
But our crusading leaders are moving in the wrong direction. To name just two examples among many, former Councilman Andy Mirikitani and the state Supreme Court have pursued policies that increase, not decrease, the opportunities for corruption in the various vice industries.
Finally, The Advertiser reports that the Liquor Commission indictments represent "one of Hawai'i's biggest cases ever alleging corruption in a government agency."
Not by a long shot.
In the last few months, this newspaper has described large-scale overtime boondoggles among city police, state prison guards and state sheriff's deputies.
Mayor Harris has received illegal campaign contributions that dwarf the dollars that allegedly changed hands in the Liquor Commission case, and it was on his watch that the colossal 'Ewa Villages corruption occurred.
These examples could be multiplied, but the general point is clear: The Liquor Commission corruption is pernicious, but it is small-kine stuff compared with some of the scams and scandals that occur elsewhere in state and local government.
And this raises a critical question: Will the state's top law enforcement officers find bigger fish to fry, or will they be content to celebrate catching manini? The Liquor Commission lackeys hardly constitute Hawai'i's biggest corruption problem.
