Alan Greenblatt is a GOVERNING correspondent.
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The Most Corrupt States
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Lots of news outlets take up FBI Agent Robert Grant's implicit challenge to figure out whether Illinois is the nation's most corrupt state. Here's a graphic from Politico:
The publication Corporate Crime Reporter crunched Department of Justice statistics in 2007 to rank the 35 most populous states of the nation by corruption. The publication calculated a corruption rate, which it defined as the total number of public corruption convictions from 1997 to 2006 per 100,000 residents.
These are the results:
1. Louisiana(7.67)
2. Mississippi (6.66)
3. Kentucky (5.18)
4. Alabama (4.76)
5. Ohio(4.69)
6. Illinois (4.68)
7. Pennsylvania (4.55)
8. Florida (4.47)
9. New Jersey (4.32)
10. New York (3.95)
11. Tennessee (3.68)
12. Virginia (3.64)
13. Oklahoma (2.96)
14. Connecticut (2.80)
This info comes at the end of a long and fairly political-sciency piece on state corruption that includes a shout-out to the late Daniel Elazar (a prominent influence on Governing's own textbook on state and local governments).
Limiting yourself to the top 35 in population rules out, say, Alaska. And should the conviction of a governor count for no more than nailing a city council member or state legislator?
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