When Crime Pays: Measuring Judicial Efficacy against Corruption in Brazil

There is a widespread perception in Brazil that civil servants caught in corrupt practices are not punished. Yet, until now, there was no hard evidence that would support such claim and some argued that this was just a mislead perception due to the recent increase in anti-corruption measures. One of the main reasons for this notably absence is that it is very difficult to identify actual cases of corruption to, then, measure whether or not they are actually punished by the judicial system. This paper proposes a method of measuring judicial system efficacy against corruption by comparing proven corruption cases punished by administrative committees with criminal and civil judicial performance for the same cases. Ours results show that in fact the Brazilian judicial system is highly ineffective in fighting corruption.