The bribery charges lodged yesterday against 15 of the city’s 24 plumbing inspectors and four other retired inspectors in the Department of Buildings brought to mind a simple fact — the more onerous and poorly administered the regulation, the more likely people will resort to illegal means to dodge it. A press release from the city’s new buildings commissioner, Patricia Lancaster, cut to the heart of the matter: “All sources have made one thing clear: the department’s inefficiency and the proliferation of corruption are inextricably linked,” the press release said. “The corruption has not been for overlooking violations or for safety concerns, but in return for real or perceived hastening of a process of approval.”

The connection between overregulation and corruption is clear to any student of history. The Soviet Union, a totalitarian state in which bribery was commonplace and a black market thrived, was the most glaring example. A corruption perception index released annually by Transparency International rates as the most corrupt many countries that were either once communist or still are.

This is not to excuse the bribe-payers, nor to excuse the bribe-takers. Nor is it to adopt the “root causes” theory of explaining criminal behavior. Overregulation is not an excuse for criminal behavior, any more than poverty or coming from a broken home is. Even in a state with minimal regulation, the occasional bad apple will come along. But at some point — and this is what we take as Ms. Lancaster’s message — law-breaking is so pervasive that it makes sense to examine the underlying law and its administration. When the federal 55-mile-an-hour speed limit was being widely disregarded, the speed limit was raised. When the nanny-tax laws were being widely disregarded, the government raised the threshold for reporting wages of household employees. There may be some widely disregarded laws that there are reasons to keep in place — those against marijuana possession, for instance. But when the market in criminal behavior sends a message, in general, policymakers are wise to look and listen.

We’re not — thank goodness — intimately familiar with the intricacies of the New York City plumbing inspection system. But there are a couple of ways the city could plunge its way out of this flood. One would be to do what the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Post Office, and the Department of State’s passport agency already do, and charge higher fees for expedited service. It pains us to suggest ways for the city to increase revenue, but if the Post Office can charge more for overnight delivery, and if the INS can charge more for an expedited visa, why shouldn’t the city consider charging more for a quick plumbing inspection? The wise policy in the long run, though, is to reduce the number of inspections and inspectors to which New Yorkers are subjected to the bare minimum.