Inspector-General of Police, George Akuffo Dampare has stated that the outfit he leads has over the years been affected by pervasive stereotyping with respect to corruption perception.
This, he believes, has made the Ghana Police Service, the default choice for most corrupt institution by most research findings.
In a five-page letter titled ‘Police Administration’s Response to your Corruption in Ghana Research Report,’ and addressed to the three institutions concerned; the police chief said there was the high likelihood that the findings of the survey were affected by stereotyping.
“There is also the real risk that your research may have been affected by a historically pervasive stereotyping of the Police Service. The Service has almost now become the default choice for such research and has therefore encourage a deep-seated public stereotype over the years.
“This stereotype may easily influence respondent choices and it is there fair to expect that you factor it in assessing the validity of your findings,” he wrote.
The statement also punched holes in procedural and analytical processes employed in the survey, among others questioning the selective aggregation or disaggregation of institutions by the researchers as well as unclear processes with respect to data collection and analysis.
Per its findings, the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Immigration Service and Ghana Revenue Authority personnel topped the list of officials who take bribes with percentage points of 53.2%. 37.4% and 33.6% respectively.
But IGP Dampare said the Police Service upon a thorough analysis of the report found that “the research and its findings are heavily challenged and corrupted from both the academic and practice point of view.”
A week after the report by the three institutions, i.e. Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) in collaboration with the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), an Afrobarometer report by the Center for Democratic Development-Ghana (CDD-Ghana) has also ranked police as the most corrupt institution with the Presidency and Parliament completing the top three slots.
Ghana drops on Corruption Perception ranking
According to the 2021 edition of the annual corruption ranking chart by Transparency International, Ghana ranked 73rd out of 180 countries on the Corruption Perception Index, CPI, report released on April 4.
“Ghana’s current performance is still below 50 which is the expected average, thus leaves much to be desired,” the report noted.
Out of 49 African countries ranked, Ghana placed 9th with Senegal, each bagging a score of 43.
Read IGP’s full statement below:
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IGP George Akuffo Dampare