A/HRC/40/59 exacerbated by collusion at worst or acquiescence at best on the part of the judiciary and open or implicit complacency on the part of policymakers. Overall, the resort by individual officials to corruption or to torture and ill-treatment is more often the result of their professional environment than of their personal character. 8 22. As a general rule, therefore, while individual accountability is an indispensable element of any serious fight against corruption or torture and ill-treatment, neither phenomenon can be eradicated through criminal prosecution alone, as individualized criminal justice cannot adequately address systemic and structural factors conducive to both corruption and torture or ill-treatment (A/HRC/28/73, para. 25), and more comprehensive, systemic measures are required in response. Recruitment practices, training, professional culture, remuneration and conditions of work can, for example, play an important role in increasing or mitigating the risk of both police brutality and corruption. 9 B. General relationship between corruption and torture or ill-treatment 23. When mapping out the interrelation between corruption and torture or ill-treatment, it must first be acknowledged that, from a conceptual perspective, not every act of torture and ill-treatment necessarily involves or relates to corruption, and not every act of corruption necessarily involves or relates to torture or ill-treatment. While the present report focuses exclusively on contexts, subcontexts and situational “niches” marked by some degree of interaction between corruption and torture or ill-treatment, the absence of such a link does not by any means diminish the inherent gravity of relevant infractions, nor does it absolve States of their legal obligations to promptly and effectively prevent and redress such abuse. 24. In the broad range of contexts in which corruption and torture or ill-treatment interact, the relationship between the two phenomena tends to be cyclical: each breeds and exacerbates the other. Not only is corruption often deliberately employed to enable, perpetuate and protect the practice of torture and ill-treatment, but torture and ill-treatment also are often deliberately employed to enable, perpetuate and protect the practice of corruption. For example, corruption within the judiciary has been found to gravely undermine accountability for human rights violations, including torture or ill-treatment (e.g. A/HRC/13/39, para. 71; and CCPR/C/TKM/CO/2, para. 31). At the same time, acts or threats of torture and ill-treatment are also used to interfere with the judiciary, including with regard to the investigation and adjudication of corruption. Although this mutually reinforcing interaction between corruption and torture or ill-treatment represents a generalized phenomenon, it is particularly prevalent and noxious in contexts of deprivation of liberty and in environments marked by discrimination, socioeconomic marginalization or other circumstances where individuals or communities are rendered vulnerable to abuse. 25. When designing measures to eradicate a specific pattern of interaction between corruption and torture or ill-treatment, it is key to understand the causal relations linking the two phenomena in that particular context. On the more general level of systemic governance, however, causal interactions between corruption and torture or ill-treatment tend to remain fluid, turning the identification of a precise and fixed causal chain into an exercise resembling the classic “chicken and egg” dilemma. From a systemic perspective, corruption and torture or ill-treatment are better understood as two concurrent effects of the same original cause, namely a failure of the surrounding governance system to prevent the abuse of power through effective checks and balances. Thus, while preventive and prosecutorial measures targeting corruption and torture or ill-treatment at the level of individual officials, institutions and processes remain indispensable, there generally is no realistic prospect for eradicating either phenomenon without effectively addressing the 8 9 Sanja Kutnjak Ivković, “Rotten apples, rotten branches, and rotten orchards: a cautionary tale of police misconduct”, Criminology & Public Policy, vol. 8, No. 4 (November 2009), pp. 777–785, at p. 780. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Handbook on Anti-Corruption Measures in Prisons (Vienna, 2017), p. 11. 7