Victimblaming in Bribery

Abstract

The article deals with victimblaming in bribery. The author of the article, based on the results of sociological research and law enforcement practice, the patterns of the social phenomenon of «victim blaming», puts forward and substantiates the hypothesis that there is a problem of victimblaming in bribery. A number of features stand out: bribery as a social phenomenon is characterized by the problem of determining the real victim; dominant in the social plotting and generalization of events is the narrative that bribery is an act with two guilty; prevailing is a comprehensive assessment of bribery as a guilty act on the part of both the bribe taker and the bribe taker; the paradoxical nature of bribery (consideration of various forms as one whole, with parallel paramount attention to receiving a bribe); the negative public assessment of the bribe giver and the bribe taker increases significantly with an integrated approach to the corresponding two forms of their actions that form it as a whole; the greatest negative public assessment is directed towards the bribe-taker