How to stop corruption? Well, the first move to consider is the private locals must also be involved in the campaign to decrease corruption. The greatest enemy of corruption will be the folks. Individuals are often sources of facts about where corruption occurs. Preferred participation may well substitute, in some cases, for bureaucracy, thus decreasing the scope of corrupt allocations. I have described in Controlling Corruption the several techniques that preferred participation was utilized in Hong Kong prosperous battle against corruption: hot lines, call-in shows, educational programs, barrio councils, oversight bodies for public agencies, involvement of skilled organizations, and so forth.

How must we feel about prevention? Corruption occurs when individuals discover their economic calculation favors corruption. If the probability of being caught is little plus the penalty is mild plus the payoff is big relative to the positive incentives facing the government official, then we will tend to come across corruption. Fortunately, it's feasible to locate areas within an organization where corruption is most likely. Some men and women call it vulnerability assessment. Here structural adjustments are worthy of systematic analysis: decrease monopoly, clarify discretion, enhance accountability, boost penalties, raise the probability of becoming caught, and link pay to performance. Also, a government might wish to develop a special anti-corruption agency, as in Hong Kong and Singapore, whose role isn't just investigating corruption but working with departments to reform policies and procedures to be able to minimize the vulnerability to corruption.

Effective change requires a strategy against corruption. This may sound understandable, but the truth is alleged anti-corruption campaigns usually lack just this. Having a strategy means recognizing that we cannot attack all forms of corruption at once, even if we don't declare this publicly. We must distinguish many types of corruption and recognize that they are not all equally harmful, even if we do not say in public. For instance, corruption in the courts or within the police is commonly extra pernicious than corruption inside the Customs Bureau or the Drivers License Department. In general, inspectors of all varieties need to be cleaner than service-providers ought to be.