Criminal Misconduct in Office

Abstract

The book is principally concerned with the use of the criminal law to deter and punish corruption in politics: from employing family members at public expense to improper spending on elections. Its main focus is the application of the offence of misconduct in public office to Members of Parliament. The criminal law should not be the sole or even the main way to tackle all corruption in politics. However, the offence of misconduct in a public office should nonetheless be seen as a constitutional fundamental. It provides a way in which corrupt conduct on the part of legislators (and other officials) can be deterred and punished with an appropriate label, thereby making them account for the misuse of power by reference to the standards of ordinary people. When other—civil law or regulatory—means prove insufficient, it should be possible for ordinary members of a jury, and not, or not just, for parliamentarians or other officials, to decide whether—for example—the expenditure of public money on legislators’ private income and benefits amounts to a criminal abuse of the public’s trust. This is what I call the ‘bottom-up’ (jury standards-led) as opposed to the ‘top-down’ (officials applying their own standards) view of the role of the criminal law in constitutional contexts. In developing this theme, an important intellectual challenge is also taken up: the provision of a history, philosophy, and politics of the offence of misconduct in office, an offence hitherto little considered by mainstream criminal law theorists in the UK.