Previous research using data on convictions for corruption-related crimes from the Public Integrity Section (PIN) of the Department of Justice points to a positive correlation between the amount of corruption in a state and the amount of federal funds provided to the state for natural disaster relief. We take a closer look at the relationship between public corruption and disaster assistance and find little support for the hypothesis that the provision of federal disaster aid increases public corruption. Our analysis suggests instead that prior evidence of such a link arises from an unexplained correlation during the 1990s between disaster aid and convictions of postal employees for crimes such as stealing mail. Convictions for postal service crimes appear to account for a large fraction of the total federal convictions reported by PIN, which could have far-reaching implications, given that the PIN data have been used so extensively in the corruption literature.

先前使用司法部公共诚信科 (PIN) 的腐败相关犯罪定罪数据进行的研究表明，一个州的腐败数量与为应对自然灾害而提供给该州的联邦资金数量之间存在正相关关系宽慰。我们仔细研究了公共腐败与灾难援助之间的关系，发现提供联邦灾难援助会增加公共腐败的假设几乎没有得到支持。相反，我们的分析表明，这种联系的先前证据来自 1990 年代灾难援助与邮政员工因盗窃邮件等犯罪而被定罪之间无法解释的相关性。邮政服务犯罪的定罪似乎占 PIN 报告的联邦定罪总数的很大一部分，