Prevention of corruption practices in Malaysia: "suitability of deterrent sentence" / Mohd Shahrullah Khan Nawab Zadah Khan, Noorselizabte Mat Ghani, Normadiah Mohamad

Almost every country globally has made corruption as a criminal offence. This act has become more serious especially in today's state of high division of labour. Corruption can be generally defined as a dishonest act of giving and taking of a sum of money or other favours in return of help to the other party1. Morally, it is a good attitude to give others gifts. Hence, there must be a grave reason why it is made an offence. This is best viewed with an example. A custom officer has duty to prohibit any illegal items from entering the state. If a drug smuggler was caught and later bribed the officer, the drugs will be in the circulation of the society. One of the consequences is that the quality of social institution will be downgraded. According to the Parliamentary debate on draft of Anti-Corruption Act on 28th of July 1997, it stated that corruption retards the development of nation and will destroy the structure of the society and a law governing. Should this act be sanctioned with deterrent type of punishment? If the consequence of the act is so destructive, the best solution is to deter the society but if it is not, deterrent punishment will deprive them of their rights. China for example takes the approach of punishing with death penalty while Vietnam punishes offender with life imprisonment and other parts of the world punishes offender with either imprisonment or fine or both2. Different act should be punished differently according to the degree of seriousness it caused. receive gifts because of the respect, love and services that they have rendered to the people, then of course it cannot be regarded as bribery. The Holy Prophet himself used to accept gifts of various forms from the head of the states in his time and also used to give similar gifts to others. This is surely not bribery because it is customary3. If we accept this perspective, the important test is would you get the gifts if you are not holding that position. So, if someone receives a reasonable gift like a hamper of goods during feast, this should not be made an offence, as it is customary to do so.