One Rotten Apple Spoils the Barrel

For many law enforcement officers this truism will hit home as they are surrounded by this saying so commonly used in society to collectively identify an entire work group or agency as corruptive and evil in its practices and work habits. There is basis for such thinking or believing such is true as this saying does not encompass the actual dynamics involved in such a process of spoiling the barrel [the entire group] based on the presence of one bad guy [bad apple] demeaning a good guy [good apple]

Unfortunately this saying method of identifying one bad apple contaminated with mold or spores invading and contaminating others is used to identify many different groups including the United States Congress, police departments, civic organizations and yes this dictum is even employed inside the many prison agencies around the U.S. because of negative publicity or events that created such ideology and beliefs.

In a political sense this concept works when one bad person [evil] uses questionable methods or means to gain an advantage over others wielding his or her power with unlimited destruction and discretion. When this occurs there are other persons threatened by this evil power and feel they must get down to the same sleazy level as the one is power in order to survive the change and ordeal joining them in their conquest to sustain this advantage sought by those in power.

 Unable or unwilling to fight these opponents of good, the good guys either succumb to the evil power and driven out of the agency or they join the cause compromising their own morals and values to co-exist within such a power structure. This results in the entire barrel becoming spoiled with bad apples and unfit to eat or accept by society’s standards.

In such cases the evil power wielded or thrown around to gain the advantage is power to exercise intentional harm on people; psychologically hurt people; physically hurt people and destroy people’s morality or ideas and foster a spirit that allows misconduct and crimes to be committed against humanity.

If you want to gauge the quality of an organization you have to realize you can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up starting from the top of the agency down to the very lowest level of manpower.  When the agency begins to blame others and  justify their lackluster performance, their inability to perform according to standards and the deliberate indifference to acknowledge or change the course of such atrocities it has begun to set a framework of evil that is hard to overcome and lost.

It will corrupt those people that were not evil by nature or values but have influenced their evil power to allow abuses of both staff and others because the setting where they worked has been granted unlimited evil power spoiling the entire barrel through perceptions and in many cases, the truth.

So how do you change the framework and how do you identify the elements of this transformation from good to bad apples. You have to analyze the evil behaviors and seek the source(s) that caused the spoiling process over time or influence.

First you   must break the framework down into three categories; dispositional, situational and systemic

 

·        Dispositional - Nature of the individuals  – Bad Apples

·        Situational – External or environmental influence (Identities and other physical existence of the setting) – Bad Barrel

·        Systemic - Broad influences: political, economic, cultural, legal power -The Bad Barrel Makers

 

Finally if you want to change the framework, the evil and the person you must change the situation and in order to change the situation you must find out where the power is in the system.