Recent statements from the Commissioner of Police Major General Antony Anderson regarding the relationship between corruption within the police force and the compensation paid to members of the constabulary has again brought this matter into public debate.

To summarise, Major General Antony Anderson said that the police force and its compensation package cannot outbid the gains from being involved in organised crime. This is a very logical and honest analysis of the phenomenon.

The returns from being involved in scamming or extortion or narcotics is significant and it increases the higher up you are in the gang.

Some of the scammers are earning millions and millions of dollars. They have gone beyond simply fooling people that they have won the lotto and need to pay an administrative fee. They have graduated to electronic theft from bank accounts, intimidating the elderly to pay over their life savings to save their loved ones, and mail fraud.

What compensation package can you pay any one of these gang members that could compete with the type of return that they are earning? You simply can’t. Not even police officers in Dubai earn the type of money scammers earn. So how then could you expect to provide a pay package to government workers to compete with this type of racket.

What really drives crime? This is a question that many have offered an explanation for, but so few have really asked the question.

Many say poverty. But crime is not a single act. There are many elements and types of crimes. There is, in fact, criminal conduct that is encourage by poverty. However, not in the way that most people think it does.

You see, when a family is poor, usually this translates or results in a lack of attendance at school. It also results in less-than-adequate resources being directed to the educational needs of children within the family.

Children become adults without benefiting from government-funded schooling largely because the support services that families usually supply does not occur when high rates of poverty exist.

The eventual result is an adult who can barely read and has no skill to properly earn a living for himself. His inability to become part of the formal employment structure of our country leads to crimes such as housebreaking and petty theft.

When an adult becomes involved in violent crime — to include rape, gang-related murder, and armed robbery — this is not as a result of poverty, but rather a result of learnt behaviour that has become his culture. Most poor males do not commit this type of crime.

A police officer can be recruited from he is 18 years old. He can earn a salary of approximately $120,000 a month. A young college graduate who goes to work for the bank as an entry-level clerk will earn a similar pay package. A high school graduate entering the work world will earn less than a police constable and they’re both 18 years old.

The police officer is no more likely than the young clerk at the bank to engage in corruption at this age. What differs is the control mechanisms that exist at a bank versus those that a police officer is regulated by when he is working on the road.

The logistics of their employment is not comparable and therefore the likelihood of being involved in corruption is not because of the recruitment process, but rather because of the nature of the job they do.

The problem, however, becomes more of a crisis as the officer becomes older and is still paid a very similar pay package to the 18-year-old who is just joining the police force.

At 38, the police officer is still earning what an entry-level clerk is earning at the bank. At this stage of his life he is likely to have a family for whom, unless he is married to someone not in the police force, he is going to find it very difficult to provide basic living conditions.

This type of compensation makes police officers susceptible to low levels of corruption, such as what is often seen when anti-corruption officials arrest officers for taking bribes in traffic-related matters.

One can see how this could occur, although such behaviour will never be condoned. This, however, has no relationship to the type of corruption that exists when a police officer starts to work for or leads a gang.

That is not economics. That is, in fact, a misunderstanding of who that person is.

Simply put, any police officer who aligns himself with organised criminal gangs, with an aim to profit, was never a policeman. He was simply a criminal who beat the system.

So the question could be asked: Why would a police officer join an organisation in which he would receive a similar compensation package to an entry-level degree holder in a bank and not receive the same level of salary increases over 20 years?

This is because police officers are paid based on their rank, and promotion is determined by a ratio system that allows only so many of a particular rank to be promoted at any one time.

Therefore, you may have 1,000 men or women who have performed well enough to be promoted to corporal, but you only have 50 spaces. This system makes it impossible for police officers to join the force and keep up with peers in the private sector in any quantifiable way.

The answer is to stop paying officers simply based on rank, but rather based on years of service.

There does exist service pay, but it is not significant. The salaries are largely based on rank.

Either the ratio system needs to go or the salary package, based almost totally on rank, needs to go.

This is what is fuelling the exodus from the force, and it’s going to get worse. Why? Because the reduced customs duty incentive that is being removed will further the frustration of inspectors and the ranks above, and make remaining in the organisation less attractive to lower ranks who dream of reaching the level at which they will be able to finally afford a new car.

To be honest, I think there is a disconnect between decision-makers and people who truly understand law enforcement issues.

The solution, as always, starts when the decision-makers begin to listen.

I wonder when that will happen.

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