Challenges of Officials’ Crime in the Georgian civil service system

Abstract

In Georgia, the issues of official crime should be studied more from a scientific perspective. In the academic literature, works are mainly found in the legal/normative discourse (Nadareishvili, 2019; Kokiashvili, 2019; Gogoladze, 2019; Samsonishvili, 2020). Despite this, separate studies overview systemic and bureaucratic problems, corruption, and patron-client networks in the public service (Machavariani, 2007; Stefes, 2008; Nasuti, 2016; Khuroshvili, 2021). Since 2014, the state has started the process of fundamental reform of the public service. However, the issues of reforming the system have been constantly on the political agenda, and these processes have been on the back burner since 2003 (Rinnert, 2015).In the process of reforming the public service system and the formation of official ethics, there were frequent policy transfers (Tabatadze, 2021), which were sometimes inconsistent with the political and administrative culture of the country and therefore doomed to failure (Khuroshvili, 2021). Although the state has taken some steps, created a whistleblower institute, designed a new public service policy, and started training officials, the problem of official crime has always been the subject of discussion by research organizations and civil society (INTERNATIONAL TRANSPARENCY, 2015; IDFI, 2020; Business Media, 2022; IDFI, 2022).The purpose of this study is to study the main challenges of official crime in the Georgian civil service system, and the research is based on quantitative and qualitative methods of social science research, namely document analysis, secondary data analysis, and expert interviews.The research reveals that from the perspective of Georgia, the term "official crime" is an ambiguous and conceptually complex phenomenon. The explanation for this from the perspective of social science is people's perceptions of what they consider a crime. For example, can we call an official's disciplinary misconduct a crime? Or can we consider what the Criminal Code of Georgia prohibits as a crime? Here is the phenomenon of deviance when we talk about bureaucracy that sometimes "white-collar" crime is not at all a deviant event in specific society groups.In the law on public service (2015), the word crime is mentioned only a few times, also in the part that an official cannot become a person who has committed an intentional crime and is convicted for the latter (Article 27) and secondly, the official has the right to refuse to carry out an order that causes committing a crime or an administrative offense. Interestingly, the Civil Service Act (2015) defines disciplinary misconduct asIgnoring or violating the norms of ethics, and general rules of conduct, aimed at discrediting an official and a public institution, regardless of whether it is committed at or outside of work (Article 85). Damages as a mechanism will be misused to release the official, and will the latter pose a threat to freedom of speech?Interviewed experts point out that official crime is often equated with corruption, although no one talks about the fact that pressure on officials can come from within the system itself. In this direction, the experts identify patron-client relations as the central problem. The interviewed expert noted that the Public Service Bureau does not talk about primary and severe problems but tries to raise incremental problems at the forefront. Here, the experts considered it an essential problem that crime is often assessed at the level of an individual, although the institutional representation of this crime needs to be studied.The research reveals that in the case of unfair dismissal of civil servants, when civil servants are reinstated, the one who dismissed the civil servant illegally does not bear any responsibility toward him. Thus, these people are still working in the system. One of the experts noted that the institutional design of the public service created after the public administration reform is a mechanism: "if tomorrow an official is fired unfairly, he has the tools to fight in court, and this is a step forward." Here, experts point out that the statistics of those crimes, which are often published by the state, are unrealistic, and the reports need to show the information based on which the official committed the crime. The official crime statistics for 2015-2019 are as follows: 592 (2015); 503 (2016); 503 (2017); 645 (2018); 635 (2019).According to the report of the Public Service Bureau, in the last three years, the following number of disciplinary violations were recorded in the system by year - 283 (2019), 107 (2020), and 81 (2021). According to experts, these statistics do not reflect the reality in the public service system today. Here, the experts emphasized the problematic nature of the Criminal Code in the area of official crimes, in particular, the following are considered official crimes today: abuse of official authority; Exceeding official authority; Exoneration of the accused from criminal liability; Compulsion to provide an explanation, testimony or conclusion; Illegal participation in entrepreneurial activity; bribery; giving a bribe; influence peddling; receiving a gift prohibited by law; official fraud; Official indifference and others. In the direction of official indifference, the legislation envisages imprisonment for three years in extreme cases, which was assessed by experts as excessive punishment. Influence trading is also a problematic issue for the interviewees, which is punishable by 3 to 5 years of imprisonment in extreme cases, and illegal participation in entrepreneurial activity, which is punishable by two to four years of imprisonment. According to experts, reducing the punishment in these three parts is necessary.