Book addresses Mississippi’s history of public corruption
The Lord’s Prayer ends, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.” Countless temptations lure people into evil. Innumerable individuals believe that the only crime is being caught. James R. Crockett’s “Hands in the Till: Embezzlement of Public Monies in Mississippi” offers a compelling examination of those thinking that it is proper to enrich oneself while abusing public responsibility. Mississippi experiences excessive corruption: “[A] report entitled ‘Public Corruption in the United States’ asserted that Mississippi was the most corrupt state in the country, even more so than states with reputations for corruption including Louisiana, Illinois, Rhode Island, and New Jersey … Mississippi had 215 convictions for a population of 2.9 million, a rate of 7.48 per 100,000 people.” Crockett writes, “… Dick Johnson, chairman of Common Cause/Mississippi, said he thinks the apparent rise in corruption relates to a loss of values, Americans substituting selfishness for service. ‘Rather than becoming something, we’re emphasizing getting more things,’ he said. ‘It’s not so much what you have, it’s that you want more than somebody else.’ The more comfortable our lives become as Americans, and ‘the more we
