When U.S. District Court Judge J. Michael Seabright sentenced Katherine and Louis Kealoha to federal prison on Nov. 30, he said, “This case is staggering given its breadth, given its scope, and given its audacity.”

Staggering indeed. The Kealohas brazenly and repeatedly stole, lied and betrayed the public trust. When they realized that some of their crimes might be exposed, they tried to frame a relative for crimes he did not commit — and they enlisted the support of many police in the framing and cover-up.

This was corruption on a grand scale, and it took the intervention of federal law enforcement to reveal it — or some of it. Since this case concluded with a plea bargain, we may never know the full scope of the Kealohas’ criminal conduct or of the crimes committed by their confederates in local law enforcement.

Much of the commentary on this case has focused on individuals. This was predictable, for legal officials must make judgments about personal responsibility, and reporters and their readers are drawn to human drama.

But research shows that the most important causes of corruption in criminal justice are organizational and cultural. When these causes are not confronted, corruption festers.

The corruption in this case cannot be explained by focusing on the low moral values of individual prosecutors and police officers. Of course, the Kealohas and their co-conspirators did lack integrity. But a focus on individual integrity provides a thin explanation, because ensuring integrity is an organizational obligation, and because it took a village to carry out the crimes that were committed in this case.

The key enabling condition of the Kealohas’ crime wave was a code of silence that prohibits police and prosecutors from reporting on their colleagues. For these crimes to occur, numerous law enforcement officials had to cooperate, and many more had to acquiesce in silent complicity with the scripts written by Katherine and Louis. There is no evidence that this code of silence has changed. Indeed, there is not even evidence that leaders in local law enforcement have acknowledged that their occupational cultures are seriously diseased.

We have seen how scandal can destroy careers and cause misery among the families of its subjects. But scandal can also be a powerful agent of change by creating opportunity for reform.

We can see some signs of positive change. The Hawaii Legislature passed Act 47, eliminating an exemption that kept much information about police misconduct secret. The Honolulu Police Commission has become slightly less passive and pusillanimous in its approach to policing the police. Media coverage of policing and prosecution has improved (a little). And after Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro was forced to step aside, his old-guard replacement Dwight Nadamoto received less than 6% of the vote in the August primary election.

There is also reason to hope that the next prosecuting attorney, Steve Alm, recognizes the critical importance of organizational culture.

But so far, the opportunity for reform created by this scandal has largely been squandered by HPD. Most notably, Susan Ballard, who replaced Louis Kealoha as HPD chief in November 2017, routinely denies that HPD has serious and systemic problems. In June, she even made the ridiculous claim that the national movement to reform policing should skip Hawaii because “we’re kind of doing OK over here.”

Nobody in this town should suppose that our problems with corruption in local law enforcement are past merely because the Kealohas have been convicted. Police leaders who endorse a “bad apple” explanation for corruption give the green light for it to continue.

In the end, Honolulu’s first couple of crime should be seen not only as the odious offenders they are, but also as leading indicators that some things are terribly wrong in our criminal justice culture.

David T. Johnson is a sociology professor at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.