Dec 17th, 2008 at 9:44 am
The Truth About Corruption
Lee Sigelman and John Sides team up to construct a graph plotting the “total number of public corruption convictions from 1997 to 2006 per 100,000 residents.”
As we can see here clearly, Illinois, though more corrupt than average, isn’t close to the top. Louisiana is a lot more corrupt than Mississippi which is a lot more corrupt than Kentucky which is substantially more corrupt than Alabama. After Alabama things get closer packed.
64 Responses to “The Truth About Corruption”
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December 17th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Ah, but that chart just shows convictions. That’s just the end result. Plenty of politicians are corrupt without ever getting caught.
Clay Davis anyone?
December 17th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I’m not sure the conviction rate is the best indicator of actual corruption…especially if the corruption extends into the justice system
December 17th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I am pleased to see that New Mexico (my home state) is so moral that the state can be omitted from the public-corruption graph.
December 17th, 2008 at 9:55 am
What’s the matter with Kansas?
December 17th, 2008 at 9:57 am
As a native Louisianian…..
We’re number one, We’re number one.
Interesting that of the top 5 3 are Bible belt and 2 aren’t that far behind. So all that Bible thumping doesn’t seems to have made politicians more moral.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Where are the other 15 or so states?
December 17th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Only 35 states? Maybe the others are SOOOO corrupt, they don’t even keep count.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Hrm. There seems to be a certain state with a (now ex) senator just convicted on seven counts, their lone congressman under investigation, and a governor found to have abused her power missing from that chart.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:07 am
The sad part is the Louisiana would lead the “uncaught” corruption stats by even more. The mechanisms of catching corruption are themselves corrupted. Those convictions are often instigated by someone even more corrupt as political payback. As I said to Josh, there really is no metric by which Louisiana is not the all time champ.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:08 am
What the fuck is Oregon’s problem? Buncha pussies.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:09 am
What a horrible chart. Typically one plots the independent variable on the horizontal or “x” axis, and the dependent variable on the vertical, or “y” axis. That and we have far more states than are shown here. But then again, using horrible charts and graphs is typical of Lord Yglesias.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:10 am
That’s not 50. One would expect Alaska to make a good run once the latest numbers are added to the chart.
And what about Rhode Island? Whoops, sorry, I just saw “convictions.”
December 17th, 2008 at 10:11 am
The list only contains the 35 most populous states.
Since the graph is based only on conviction rates, I don’t know what to make of it. Is Louisiana really more corrupt than New Jersey? Or does Louisiana just have a higher percentage of dumb fucks who don’t know how to do corruption without getting caught?
December 17th, 2008 at 10:13 am
On the question of whether corruption convictions are a good measure of actual corruption–Nevada’s standing gives me doubts.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Plenty of politicians are corrupt without ever getting caught.
‘Zactly. Does anyone really believe that S. Carolina is less corrupt than N. Carolina? Bueller? Bueller?
December 17th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Texas is less corrupt than Massachusetts? I mean, I guess I don’t have any real information that would suggest otherwise, but…I doubt this.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Adam: Read the Boston Globe and you would see that MA pols are pretty corrupt. In fact there are 2 high profile arrests in just the last month just on the Boston city council – Diane Wilkerson, and Chuck Turner.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I think DTM nailed this one at #3. The conviction rate doesn’t really measure the level of corruption… it measures the number of corrupt people who were sufficiently high-profile and/or stupid to get caught. Illinois corruption has always tended to be highly professional and thorough, which is why the Blagojevich case is so surprising. That guy’s not only a dim bulb… he’s stark raving batshit nuts.
I also expect that the Alabama total includes the conviction of Gov. Siegelman, which is questionable at best.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:24 am
I’d also suggest that this data needs to be normalized to account for the number of public officials in each state. Each state only has one governor and two senators, for example, no matter how many people it has it in. Chicago has 1 Mayor and 50 alderman for 2.8 million people.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:26 am
According to the federal report on which the graph is based, Alaska had 39 convictions. Wikipedia gives Alaska’s population as 683,478 which puts the conviction rate at 5.7 per 100,000. That would place Alaska third on the list.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I am proud to report that my state of New Hampshire, with 14 convictions and 1,315,828 people, has a conviction rate of 1.06 per 100,000, placing it way down below Minnesota but above Iowa.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Here in Minnesota, we are working hard to compete for #1.
Now when you say public corruption conviction. Let’s say we had a Senator taking bribes by having his wife paid a bogus salary by a insurance executive who was given the money by another guy who really wanted to pay the bribe.
If they were all convicted, is that one public corruption conviction or four?
December 17th, 2008 at 10:49 am
JimboSlice said:
True. But William Mendenhall always seemed to favor using y to denote obvervations (independent variables). just sayin’.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Man, between them the two Daleys have run Chicago for over fifty years. Half a century without being convicted! Doesn’t make the machine any less corrupt. Convictions don’t measure the degree of corruption when corruption is as common as oxygen.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Weak sauce, man…put DC up on that list, and we make Louisiana look like a bunch of boy scouts who spend their weekends singing in the church choir (ok, sure, they might sneak some communion wine every now and then).
December 17th, 2008 at 10:58 am
New Jersey will rise in the ranks of politocrooks when 2007-08 is included. A big bunch of stupid f*cks got busted.
US Attorney Christie has been burnishing his record, getting ready to challenge Corzine for Governor next year.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15334483
December 17th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Oregon baby, come here to live clean in all sorts of ways. Farm fresh food, great eating, and clean politics.
who woulda thunk that the Southern and East Coast boys had so much in common. Love the graph.
December 17th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Oregon FTW!
December 17th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Hey! Where the *&%$ is Rhode Island? Here’s something we’re good at, and even here….ignored.
December 17th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
The table is a bit misleading, because it includes the Clinton administration years. In those years there weren’t any prosecutions of note in Illinois, because the corruption extended all the way through DoJ to the White House. Senator Peter Fitzgerald arranged for Patrick Fitzgerald to become US Attorney and everything changed–corrupt politicos, Democrats and Republicans, were routed.
December 17th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Louisiana is the toughest on corruption and Oregon the least?
December 17th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
There was a similar graph in the NYT on Sunday that had North Dakota with the top covictions per 100,000. These are dubious statistics though, any sort of per capita statistical measure will show skewed numbers for smaller states, cities or whatever. Statistical measures trend toward the mean as you increase your N. Its the same reason why you’ll never see a top ten most populous city occupy a top ten per capita crime rate, or top ten per capita anything.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
In the late 80s, 20/20 called Rhode Island “the most corrupt state in the union.” Now I see that in the intervening 20 years, we … no longer exist?
December 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I’m not really convinced that there is a positive correlation between corruption and convictions. After all, if a system is really corrupt, the courts would be corrupt too. And they could easily be bribed into an acquittal. One of the most corrupt countries I’ve been to is Thailand. And nobody ever goes to jail for corruption there. Hell, even Thaksin Shinawatra remains unconvicted. This is a country where, on the night before an election, party officials go through villages and literally pay people to vote for their party. It’s called the Night of the Barking Dogs. This is a country where, if you really need to have someone killed, you hire a cop so it gets done right. This is a country where the Police and the Army compete for control of the illegal drug trade. But does anyone get convicted? Never. That’s real corruption. So I’m not sure this really means anything. Look how far down Texas is. In Texas, you can give a campaign contribution to the judge hearing your case. Think that might affect your chances of being convicted? I’d say so, but maybe I’m just being too cynical.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I would think that a better measure would be convictions/government worker. More difficult to calculate to be sure, but more reflective of the prevailing “culture”.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Why are you defending bad politics? If Chicago has corrupt politicians (regardless of affiliation), they should be repudiated and brought on charges, not compared to other, more corrupt states.
/voted for Obama
//liberal
///non-partisan
December 17th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Why is mky state, the Great State of Delaware, not on the list? If we’re “off the page,” is our trajectory up from the top, or down from the bottom? Me and Joe Biden want to know–.
December 17th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
So what’s worse, this graph or the child poverty one from the other day. I lean towards child poverty, which was just totally uninformative.
Why are you defending bad politics?
Who’s doing what now?
December 17th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-IT
December 17th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
The South excels in something!! let’s celebrate!
December 17th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Illinois has an elaborate system designed by Richard M. Daley to keep politicians from getting caught. Not surprisingly, the system is currently presided over by Richard J. Daley.
This is the city that Obama chose. All through Harvard Law School, he told everybody he was going back to Chicago to become Mayor. And he didn’t choose Chicago to clean it up, he chose it to lead his team to victory in the local game played under the local rules.
December 17th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Hey, how about the District of Columbia? Convictions per 100k 100k should certainly include us in the top 10.
dk
December 18th, 2008 at 1:48 am
DC and Atlanta are top 10 most populous and top 10 highest crime. Detroit is number 11 most populous and has the highest crime.
December 18th, 2008 at 3:42 am
Wasn’t the whole “Illinois is more corrupt” argument focused specifically on Chicago?
No doubt Chicago is the most corrupt, but since the rest of Illinois isn’t as bad, Illinois as a whole is only “above average” on the corruption scale.
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Make it happen.
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