Where The Corruption Is?

The headline touts that North Dakota tops the nation in the highest number of convicted politicans on a per capita basis.

Its largest city is legendary for machine-style politics and its elected leaders have been under investigation for years, but by one measure, Illinois is not even close to the nation's most-corrupt state.

North Dakota, it turns out, may hold that distinction instead.

Federal authorities arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich Tuesday after a wiretap allegedly recorded him scheming to make money on his appointment to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama. Blagojevich, a Democrat, ran for election in part on cleaning up after his predecessor, Republican George Ryan, who was convicted in 2006 of racketeering, bribery and extortion.

That's an interesting angle to take, but there are more than a few factors that goes into corruption investigations and convictions across the nation. For starters, this relates to federal convictions, and not convictions on state charges. It also ignores indictments.

Also influencing the numbers is the aggressiveness of prosecutors. While this particular study looks at federal convictions, aggressiveness varies widely across the nation at all levels of law enforcement. Some prosecutors are quite aggressive, while others barely touch the issue of political corruption. Some prosecutors make their mark by going after corrupt politicians, while others hope for advancement by focusing on other areas of malfeasance.

On a per capita basis, North Dakota, Louisiana, and Mississippi are the most corrupt states.

On a raw tally of convictions, we get a slightly different picture: Florida has 824 convictions, with a per capita rate of 4.5 per 100,000 people; New York has 704 convictions, but a per capita tally of 3.5 per 100,000 people. Illinois weighs in at 502 convictions and a per capita rate of 3.9 per 100,000 people.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have states like Oregon that barely has any convictions at all. I'd posit that this has less to do with the lack of corrupt politicians and more to do with prosecutors who aren't pursuing such investigations.