What drives magistrates' perceptions of prosecutors being corrupt?

Authors:

Michael O’Donovan and Jean Redpath

Summary:

A survey of magistrates, administered in December 2022, asked respondents to agree or disagree with statements such as ‘prosecutors treat court users with respect’ (the response ‘don’t know’ was also an option). The analysis, completed in February 2023, showed that 61 percent of magistrates agreed that prosecutors treat court users with respect, but less than half agreed that prosecutors ensure that justice is done. Some 20 percent agreed that prosecutors are corrupt, while only 45 percent agreed that prosecutors are not corrupt. Magistrates’ actual experience of being bribed does not appear to be driving perceptions: while 1 in 9 knew of an attempt to bribe a magistrate, none of these were by a prosecutor, suggesting that other actions by prosecutors drive perceptions. One third agreed with the statement ‘prosecutors are biased’ with this view being correlated with perceptions of corruption, suggesting that apparently biased prosecutor actions may drive corruption perceptions. The nature of the bias was not clear from the survey. In addition, 4 out of 5 agreed that prosecutors request postponements too easily. This suggests that addressing bias and postponements may be key to improving corruption perceptions. A separate analysis for Gauteng found magistrates’ perception of prosecutors being corrupt was more than 50 percent higher than the rest of the country, suggesting a specific anti-corruption intervention in Gauteng may be necessary, given that other data also points to anomalously poor performance in the province.

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LINK TO SURVEY ANALYSIS