About CAPI
History
In recent years, communities worldwide have increasingly demanded higher standards of integrity from their government officials. Many of the offices responsible for answering these calls to action have looked for guidance to the New York City Department of Investigation (DOI), one of America’s oldest, most respected, and most innovative anti-corruption authorities. To meet this significant and growing demand, DOI leaders envisioned an independent, nonprofit resource center dedicated to bolstering municipal anti-corruption efforts across the country and around the globe. By bridging the gap between practitioners and scholars, DOI believed that this center could spur anti-corruption research, promote essential tools and best practices, and cultivate a professional network to share new developments and lessons learned. As a result, the Department of Investigation partnered with Columbia Law School in 2013 to launch the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (CAPI) to fill this critical need. By generously providing financial and technical support for CAPI's launch and activities, DOI turned its vision for CAPI into a thriving hub for the global public integrity community.
Mission and Goals
CAPI’s mission is to improve the capacity of public offices and practitioners to deter, identify, and combat corruption.
To accomplish this mission, CAPI is working to:
- Build and support a vibrant community of leaders in the public integrity field.
- Develop tools and resources to help governments and practitioners fight corruption.
- Utilize and advance research and scholarship on important public integrity issues.
CAPI cultivates and engages an active network of public integrity professionals, including anti-corruption agency personnel such as Inspectors General, investigators, attorneys, judges, and members of the advocacy and academic communities. We will organize regular conferences and other events, maintain a robust database of public integrity contacts, and foster active peer-to-peer discussion networks. In addition, CAPI will facilitate webinars and roundtable discussions. Our website will feature up-to-date content and a space to connect professionals across the globe.
CAPI will develop concrete tools to support practitioners working in the public integrity space. We will share materials for best practices to guide practitioners through core tasks, issue bulletins on current, relevant issues, and produce articles about subjects of interest in the field. CAPI will also provide carefully curated lists of the best publicly available resources in the corruption field, and aggregate media clippings to keep our community abreast of newsworthy events and trends in law and policies.
CAPI aims to utilize and advance research and scholarship on important public integrity issues. Through our website and events, including conferences, speaker series, webinars, and roundtable discussions, we will bring together scholars who are studying and conducting cutting-edge research into corruption, the practitioners charged with eradicating it, and advocacy groups whose important work shines a light on this critical problem. The resulting collaboration will benefit the entire CAPI community as we work together toward our common goal of corruption-free government.
Dating back to the 1870's, New York City's DOI investigates and refers for prosecution City employees and contractors engaged in corrupt or fraudulent activities or unethical conduct. CAPI regularly reports on its progress to DOI, which provides it with both expert advice and financial support.
CAPI is housed in New York City at Columbia Law School, a global hub of legal scholarship. CAPI provides scholars and students with opportunities to engage in hands-on work in this increasingly important and vital field.