Lecturer in Criminal Law at the University of Valencia Ángeles Jareño has led a research project to establish a diagnosis of public corruption and criminal policy in the Valencian region. The conclusions of this work have been published in Corrupción pública. Cuestiones de política criminal: la Comunitat Valenciana, published by Iustel in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

The analysis has been performed from different disciplines and it examines jurisprudence on public corruption in the Valencian region, town planning regulations, the role of transparency, the function of specialised prosecution bodies and of the media.

Ángeles Jareño states that after studying crimes related to public corruption "it has become evident that there is no need to amend the Penal Code to create new concepts to prosecute corruption offences; we only need to make some adjustments to the existing ones". However, the lecturer believes that now is the time to question "the internal proportionality of the sanctions contained in the Penal Code, which imposes a similar punishment on crimes of public corruption and, for example, on theft or fraud".

Research shows, in the opinion of the project coordinator, "a significant change in the amount of jurisprudence, which has been increasing in the last two or three years. This increase has been influenced by both the creation of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in Spain and the change in the social perception of corruption offences, intensified by the economic crisis when the population is more sensitive to these cases".

IMBALANCE BETWEEN SENTENCES AND SOCIAL REALITY
In fact, after analysing dozens of sentences – related with administrative and urban development corruption, bribery, embezzlement, negotiations and activities prohibited to public officials and crimes against the public administration – researcher Jorge Correcher asserts that the study on jurisprudence carried out in the Valencian context reveals "a situation of imbalance between the number of convictions and the social reality associated with this group of crimes".

The lecturer in Criminal Law stresses the coincidence "in parallel of poor governance and increased corruption". However, "the most remarkable rise in the number of cases taken to court came later, in the last three or four years, just when the Valencian Community was experiencing a progressive process of impoverishment and the risk of social exclusion increased".

"Valencian citizens have been witnessing, for a few years now, a dramatic reduction in their standard of living, their career prospects and their access to health. Meanwhile, public money has been managed in another direction, which obviously was not the direction needed, in view of the results", says Jareño.

As for transparency in political action, in this work Professor Ricard Martínez emphasises that the task of controlling the government’s action requires access to information from different sources and in relation to the Valencian case, "in the near past, data protection and confidentiality agreements have been invoked as barriers for denying access to documents".

INCENTIVES FOR CORRUPTION IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT
For his part, Professor Leonardo García highlights the various incentives for corruption in urban development, which are "the cause of the bad reputation associated with this sector, mainly in the field of urban planning, with reference to the current Law 5/2014, of 25 July, of the Generalitat, on Planning, Urbanism and Landscape". García also refers to the incentives through which regulations "contribute to permissibility, in view of the traditional lack of discipline in urban development, especially in undeveloped land".

In this project, journalism professor Josep Lluís Gómez Mompart discusses political corruption in the media after an investigation based on the regional newspapers Las Provincias and Levante-EMV. "It has been found that the social perception of corruption has not been blown out of proportion and, at the same time, that citizens have good reasons to believe that there is more corruption than that reaching the justice system", he says.

PROCEDURAL DELAYS AND IMPROPER MANAGEMENT OF FUNDS
In his article, researcher Vicente Torres explains the operation of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in Valencia and María Luisa Cuerda addresses the procedural delays in cases as well-known as Gürtel, Fabra, Emarsa and Brugal, as well as the improper management of public funds in relation to the Calatrava Towers in Valencia, the airport and convention centre in Castelló or the City of Light in Alicante. In turn, Óscar Vicente speaks of techniques for measuring corruption.

Ángeles Jareño is a lecturer and accredited professor in Criminal Law at the University of Valencia. Her most recent lines of research revolve around public corruption and legal protection of privacy. Jareño has published several papers on criminal guarantees, special part of criminal law, protection of privacy and public corruption.

Ángeles Jareño. Corrupción pública. Cuestiones de política criminal: la Comunitat Valenciana. Iustel. Madrid. 2015