How to Cut down corruption of kings Landing City watch

[Mrstrategy]

How could  master of laws or hand of the king have cut down on corruption in Kings landing City watch?

[astarkchoice]

 fire all corrupt officers and replace them with men you know are honest.

[Alester Florent]

Sacking Janos Slynt and replacing him with Jacelyn Bywater would be a good start. Renly wanted to do this (or at least the first part) and it's one of the first things Tyrion does on arrival in King's Landing.

You'll probably never eradicate corruption in that kind of outfit altogether, but the fish rots from the head. Putting men who are fair and honest (but sufficiently experienced to know the tricks of the trade) in charge is probably the most important single change that the king's council can make.

[Craving Peaches]

Light the wildfire caches.

[chrisdaw]

A free press.

[sifth]

Kill or send the unjust officers to the Wall. Replace them with men of honor. Though considering the City Watch was founded by Daemon, I wonder if there was ever a time it wasn't corrupt.

[Lady Stonehearts Simp]

*begins laughing maniacally*

[frenin]

I very much doubt you can cut corruption in the City Watch to optimal levels, the most you can do is making it loyal to your persona

[Lady Stonehearts Simp]

a purge 

[James Arryn]

What we think of as corruption wouldn’t have qualified in a feudal setting. Corruption is the premise that public (or at least concerning the public) interests are being supplanted by individual interests, but individual interests are the bedrock of a feudal society. Everyone is working towards individual interests, either their own or their liege’s. 

 

Basically, everyone is paying protection money, it’s an extortion racket. So corruption is not public funds being misused or appropriated, there is no such thing as public funds. Kings or whoever have people to keep the peace, but don’t mistake that for protecting the citizenry or upholding the law except where it costs the crown/aristocracy. So people guilty of what we’re calling corruption are more likely to be assailed for stealing from their master or causing a disturbance that costs the king/lord to fix/subdue in case it got out of control and became an insurrection or similar.
 

Protecting one citizen from another was a different matter, when it was handled it was more like a medieval version of civil court. Sometimes if there was open court a citizen could bring such a matter to the king’s attention, but that was rare and not handled the way we might expect. The king or lord would be much less interested in making sure citizen X got the benefit of law, much more concerned with the preservation of the status quo, in particular preserving the relative status of respective people/groups.

This is why almost every medieval legal principle was not about discovering truth, but upholding order, ie each ‘in their place’. Concepts like ‘witnesses’ from the time had little to do with an investigation, but rather were a way that the person with more power/influence/support would always prevail over someone with less; testimony was not ‘I saw X do Y’, it was ‘I know ____ and support them.’ The person with more power WAS right, according to the law. Hence it was less likely for the less powerful person, however victimized, to be the one to bring a matter before the court, they had already lost and mostly knew it.
 

Much more often it was the other way; a powerful person would rid themselves of an unwanted underline or take possession of their land or w/e and do so with official sanction either directly or through the courts, ie by taking them to court and demonstrating their greater influence. So you’re not going to cut down on corruption, you are just going to maybe change who steals from whom. 

[GZ Bloodraven]

Abolish the City Watch, institute mental health and community watches, and limit the supply of weaponry. Less corruption, less abuse.

[Gilbert Green]

Abolish the dwarfs penny tax policy.  I'm sure Aragorn would not approve.