Towards Redefining the Legal Frameworks for Combating Corruption in Nigeria: Integrating the Theories of Crime Causation and Penological Concept of Punishment

Abstract

The paper aims at showing that while punishment is useful in fighting against crime in society-the crime of corruption inclusive, reports have shown that punishment alone is inadequate for winning the battle against corruption in Nigeria. The paper highlights the imperative needs of developing long term measures that would nib corruption in the bud before its full manifestations. It considers synchronising both legal and social approaches by examining the criminological and sociological concepts of crime causation and the penological approaches to punishment. The paper also intends to identify and critically examine some of those factors that had advanced as causes and the ineffective treatments for corruption, and to find out why are the lofty legal approaches are not effective. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to identify other ways that can complement punishment in order to improve the fight against corruption in Nigeria; by a critical analysis of some theories of causation of crime, in order to redefine corruption and its causes, and finally to proffer suggestions for the needs to re-strategise and reintegrate the existing punitive measures with other non-legal approaches for both short and long terms solutions which could help anti-corruption initiatives to curb the excess of corruption in Nigeria.