The Wire is an excellent series about corruption

I think the "The Wire" ("Langalla" in Finland) is probably the best recent programme about corruption. One of the actors from it actually described the series as being about how institutions fail. It sounds very suitable source material for your project as it's about corruption on a human scale, involving individuals and families instead of faceless groups.

It's excellent at examining how corruption is born at all different levels of society, from the poor right up to the very rich, and how it distorts everyone's sense of duty to other humans. No one is good or bad, they're all just responding to what life throws at them in different ways. Sometimes you see a drug dealer, sometimes you see a politician running for mayor, and they're both products of the system they exist in.

The Wire's series each concentrate on different parts of society (one is set in the harbour, one is set in the local school etc), but they're all very good at pinpointing how people end up doing things that are bad.

For example when several police forces find a dozen dead bodies in a shipping container, none of the forces want to investigate because it would mean spoiling their crime statistics, which would harm their chances of getting funding from the tax payer. In other words, over-reliance on crime figures is corrupting the police, something that very few people talk about. Politicians and pressure groups use crime figures all the time, but how many people realise how corrupting this can be?

The series set in a school is also fascinating, it takes a look at how badly-funded schools try to cope with stupid education laws and unruly pupils. Some of the pupils too are gradually becoming corrupt as they end up becoming part of local gangs (there's a very disturbing scene where some young children learn how to use handguns as if they were toys).

Try renting a "The Wire" boxed set and watching several episodes back to back, hopefully you'll see what I mean.

Chuck Palahniuk

A great novelist, that works with several concepts and ideas on the edge of corruption, and individuals that are using a system or having been abused by the corruption from the system.

I recommend taking a look at "Choke" and "Survivor"

Some titles

Well, I would recommened you "Copland". Typical Cop-Corruption with great actors (Harvey Keitel and so on).
"Dark Blue" is great, too.

Some other movies (mostly police and political corruption):
"Training Day"
"American Gangster"
"Traffic"
"16 Blocks"
"L.A. Confidental"
"China Moon"
"City of God"
"Ransom"

The Private War We Fight

If you somehow can get the Brazilian documentary called "The Private War We Fight", I really recommend it. I have as bonus material on my City of God dvd. The documentary analyzes the crime of Brazilian favelas.

Another good documentary, which refers to corruption is one called "Cocaine Cowboys". The documentary is (surprisingly) about cocaine trafficing in Miamin during the 80's. It also shows how the city's economic development is strongly linked to drug money.

Corruptions is a common thing

Sorry, can't give you a Definitive Book on Corruption or anything.

Corruption is most interesting when it is portrayed as an feature of a system or a way of life. And NOT portrayed as pure evil or error in a system (as we often see it in Finland).

Take, for example, the Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutierrez. In this brutally nasty and visceral portrayal of Cuba, corruption is just the way of the day. Everyone is involved in it small time, because everyone has to survive. Nobody even despises corruption! It's an inevitable part of life, so it's not that different from paying taxes in Finland.

And if you want an opposite, a book about a 'perfect' system completely free from not only corruption, but from pressures of the society, try Herman Hesse's unbelilevable masterpiece The Glass Bead Game (Lasihelmipeli, Das Glasperlenspiel).

TV series: Spooks ( an excellent BBC series about spies in MI5. Every character has to balance between loyalty, corruption and survival) and Cidade dos Homens (City of Men, a story about a gang-controlled area in Sao Paolo, a den of corruption, into which the police only come with the army).