Which is more disturbing in a thriller: a corrupt system, or a system that follows every rule but still hides the truth?

I recently read a legal thriller that got me thinking about this question, and I’m curious how others see it.

Most thrillers present the danger as corruption — someone breaking the law, hiding evidence, manipulating the system. That kind of antagonist is easy to understand because there’s a clear villain.

But the book I read took a different angle. The system itself wasn’t corrupt at all. Every rule was technically followed. Every procedure worked exactly the way it was designed to work.

Yet the result was still terrifying.

Evidence logs expired because of retention policies. Access to certain records required procedures that took longer than the system allowed. Automated rules quietly closed doors one by one until the protagonist realized that proving the truth might become impossible simply because the clock ran out.

Nobody was openly cheating.

Nobody was obviously breaking the law.

And that’s what made it unsettling.

It made me wonder which type of story is actually more disturbing.

Is it worse when a system is corrupt and someone abuses power?

Or when the system works exactly as designed, but the design itself prevents the truth from being proven?

The second one almost feels scarier to me because there isn’t a single villain you can confront.

Curious what others think about this idea, especially in legal thrillers or mystery stories.