Nurturing the deterrents

Prevention is better than cure, though a very age-old saying, has become very much relevant to our lives these days due to the fact that the problems we are facing are many and multifarious in nature and, therefore, the preferred best way of solving these problems is to stop their occurrence, rather than taking action on them later.
 Happening of misdeeds may be prevented in two ways: (a) punishing the wrong-doers promptly so that they and others are afraid of doing it in future; (b) encouraging or nurturing values which act as deterrents in the minds of persons preventing them from doing bad things. The later process requires subtle touches during formulation and implementation stages and is more effective in the long run than the former. Some concrete examples will make the point clear.
During audit an auditor detects certain financial irregularities involving substantial amount of money. He approaches the person concerned with ulterior motive and puts forward proposal of dropping the objection in exchange of money, which is less than the total amount of money involved. The person concerned agrees to the proposal as it is favourable to him and exchange of money takes place. Here both persons are guilty but the auditor is guiltier because he made the proposal. But the situation may take a reverse turn. The person concerned may approach the auditor with the proposal of giving certain amount of money in exchange of dropping the objection. Here also both the giver and taker are guilty but this time the giver is guiltier as he initiated the deal and the receiver was tempted to accept it. Had the auditor been a person of integrity, the incident would not have happened at all. Similar incidents also take place during maintenance of law and order where wrong doers are arrested and prosecuted by the police.
One way of treating this sort of problem is to start prosecution and punish the guilty promptly. But in our present legal system, the process is time-consuming and hence the desired effect is not visible as number of such cases is increasing according to media reports.
Another way of tackling it is to create a sense among persons which will discourage them from taking the illegal path. One such way is nurturing and patronising the social and moral values coupled with transplanting the fear factor of after-effects of wrong-doing in their minds firmly. Strong morality is always a plus point in preventing corruption or illegal activities. So, proper emphasis should be on developing moral values among people. Besides, certain actions create a sense of fear among ordinary people and keep them away from evil acts. For example, every year thousands of crores of taka are spent from the public exchequer for infrastructure development and other asset building activities through various development projects. Even misappropriation of a small fraction of money from each project will make the figure very big at the end.
Audit parties from various Audit Directorates under the Office of The Comptroller and Auditor General of Bangladesh go for verifying whether the money was spent as per financial rules and regulations. If irregularities are detected, these are reported and the persons concerned face the music. This very detection and subsequent suffering of the culprit is a deterrent which prevents others from doing this. If these were not detected at all, everybody would have been tempted to commit irregular activities. Imagine a situation where audit parties are not there and maintenance of financial discipline, proper spending of government money etc., is left to the administrative authorities to be tackled. There would be a flood of irregular activities.
However, it can not be denied that there may be some bad elements in the audit parties also, like any other government machinery, doing activities detrimental to strengthening the deterring effect. But definitely, their number is few compared to that of good people; otherwise the whole system would have collapsed. Fortunately, that did not happen.
There should not be any compromise on the point that misdeeds must be flashed in the media as facts so that the culprits are punished, but another equally important point is to ensure that proper care is taken so that there must not be over-flashing or sweeping remarks about a whole group of people for the misdeeds of one or two persons, to make the report spicy, which will demoralise good auditors as these will put them and the bad ones in the same category. Putting less importance or not highlighting the good work done by auditors will cause serious damage to their mental attitude and moral courage thereby affecting detection of fraud, forgery and other illegal activities badly.
Similar is the situation with police personnel and others responsible for maintaining law and order or checking corruption. There are both bad and good elements in law enforcing and corruption prevention agencies. Accepting bribe is a common allegation against them. In spite of this, the fear among criminals of getting arrested by good elements of police force has a tremendous deterring effect on them. Just think for a moment what would be the crime situation if there were no police force - it will be a criminal's paradise. So, comments or reporting of such cases should be well thought, well-balanced and hundred per cent factual. Catchy or sweeping remarks, reports must be avoided.
Over-flashing of bad incidents is detrimental to the society in general, as it pollutes the atmosphere and is a cause for mental agony for those not actually involved, and therefore should be avoided. In other words, nothing should be done which will affect the inherent deterrent effect of existing systems; rather their nurture, promotion and proliferation should be encouraged. Over-criticism spoils the child rather than correcting him - another age-old saying should not be forgotten.

The writer is a retired Deputy Comptroller and Auditor General (Senior), Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of Bangladesh.
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