The rate at which U.S. officials have committed public corruption crimes has consistently gone down over the past 30 years, according to a new study out of the University of Missouri.
The university researchers studied 16,000 corruption cases that took place from 1986 to 2014. Only 2 percent, or 320 cases, were committed by top-ranking officials and would be at the same level as the crimes committed by former Va. Gov. Robert McDonnell and Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Experts used court case filings and updated government records to create an “objective” slate from which they were drawing their conclusions, the report stated.
The majority of the crimes involved lower-level officials and, for unnamed reasons, did not materialize in the media’s coverage.
“This provides an objective picture of public corruption, in contrast to public perceptions that are colored by sensational media coverage of a few outlier cases,” said researcher Jeffrey Milyo, professor of economics at the University of Missouri.
Despite the heavy presence of bribery, conspiracy, embezzlement, false statements and theft that are dramatized on primetime TV, researchers concluded public corruption among top-ranking officials is not as rampant by the same proportion it is covered in the news or in Hollywood.
