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CRIME, CORRUPTION & CAPACITY IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA. By Maxine Pitts. Canberra: Asia Pacific Press (at the Australian National University). 2002. xi, 197 pp. (Tables.) A$36.00/US$32.00, paper. ISBN 0-7315-3681-9.
In this book, Maxine Pitts argues that the state's capacity to engage in crime control is diminished by corrupt leadership. Popular examples such as the Sandline affair and the Cairns Conservatory scandal are used to demonstrate the state's limited commitment to public accountability, which is said to emphasize the positive value of cheating. Pitts links the absence of leadership integrity in Papua New Guinea to citizen antipathy to the state, and to the manifestation of 'weak' state characteristics such as the inability to provide basic goods and services and effective crime control.
Having highlighted the state's lack of capacity to control escalating crime in Papua New Guinea, Pitts sets out to "build on the arguments and views of ... others, that community controls are more effective than state...