Crimes of the powerful

Question 1

Why are Marxists so interested in white collar and corporate crime?

Answer 1

Although all classes commit crime, the law is is selectively enforced so higher class and corporate offenders are less likely to be prosecuted than working class offenders

Question 2

What did Reiman and Leighton’s 2012 book argue?

Answer 2

“The rich get richer and the poor get prison”
- the more likely a crime is to be committed by higher class people, the less likely it is to be treated as an offence
- higher rate prosecutions for wc crime but more forgiving view for crimes committed by higher classes.

Question 3

What is the difference between occupational crime and corporate crime?

Answer 3

• Occupational crime is committed by employees simply for their own personal gain, often against the organisation they work for e.g. stealing from the company or its customers.
• Corporate crime is committed by employees for their organisation in pursuit of its goals, e.g. deliberately misselling products to increase company profits.

Question 4

What does Tombs argue?

Answer 4

The difference between these types of offence is more about who has the power to define an act as a crime than about how harmful the act is: powerful corporations can influence the law so that their actions are not criminalised.

Question 5

Why does white collar and corporate crime do more harm than street crime?

Answer 5

• the cost of white collar crimes in the USA is over ten times that of ordinary crimes
• Tombs notes that corporate crime has enormous costs: physical, (deaths, injuries and illnesses) environmental (pollution) and economic (to consumers, workers, taxpayers and governments). He concludes that corporate crime is widespread, routine and pervasive.

Question 6

What are the 5 types of corporate crime?

Answer 6

• financial crimes
• crimes against consumers
• crimes against employees
• crimes against the environment
• state-corporate crime

Question 7

Give some examples of financial crimes

Answer 7

Tax evasion, bribery, money laundering and illegal accounting.
Victims include other companies, shareholders, taxpayers and governments.

Question 8

Give some examples of crimes against consumers

Answer 8

Such as false labelling and selling unfit goods.

For example in 2011, the French government recommended that women with breast implants from Poly Implant Prothèse had these removed because they were filled with dangerous silicone rather than more expensive medical silicone. Some 300,000 implants had been sold in 65 countries.

Question 9

Give some examples of crimes against employees

Answer 9

Sexual and racial discrimination, violations of wage laws, of rights to join a union and of health and safety laws.

Tombs calculates that up to 1100 work related deaths a year involve employers breaking the law - this is more than the annual total of homicides.

Question 10

Give some examples of crimes against the environment

Answer 10

Illegal pollution of air, water and land such as toxic waste dumping.

After investigation, Volkswagen admitted installing software in 11 million of its diesel vehicles globally.

Question 11

Give some examples of state corporate crime

Answer 11

This refers to the harms committed when government institutions and businesses cooperate to pursue their goals.

E.g. private companies contracted to the US military have been accused of involvement in the torture of detainees during the American occupation of Iraq.

Question 12

What is the abuse of trust argument?

Answer 12

High-status professionals occupy positions of trust and respectability. We entrust them with our finances, health, our security and personal information. However their position and status gives them the opportunity to abuse this trust.

Question 13

Give some examples that illustrate the ‘abuse of trust’ argument

Answer 13

• accountants and lawyers can be employed to launder criminal funds into legitimate businesses. They can also act corruptly by inflating fees, committing forgery, illegally diverting client’s money etc.
• there has been a huge number of fraudulent claims to insurance companies for treatments that haven’t actually been performed.
• dentists have claimed payments from the NHS for treatments they have not carried out.

Question 14

What did Shipman do?

Answer 14

He was a GP convicted of the murder of 15 of his patients, but is believed to have murder over 200.

He had previously been convicted of obtaining the powerful opiate pethidine by forgery and deception, and in the same year obtained enough morphine to kill 360 people. Yet he only received a warning from the GMC and was allowed to continue practising as a GP.

Question 15

Why is white collar and corporate crime so ‘invisible’?

Answer 15

• The media
• Lack of political will
• Crimes are complex
• De-labelling
• Under reporting

Question 16

Explain how the media makes corporate crime ‘invisible’

Answer 16

• The media give very limited coverage to corporate crime which reinforces the stereotype that crime is a WC phenomenon.
• They describe corporate crime as technical infringements rather than as real crime.
  E.g. embezzlement becomes ‘accounting irregularities’ / deaths at work are ‘accidents’ rather than employers’ negligence.

Question 17

Explain how lack of political will makes corporate crime ‘invisible’

Answer 17

Lack of political will to tackle corporate crimes. Politicians’ rhetoric of being tough on crime is focused instead on street crime.

E.g. while the home office uses crime surveys to discover the true extent of ‘ordinary’ crime, it does not do so for corporate crime.

Question 18

Explain how the crimes being complex makes corporate crime ‘invisible’

Answer 18

The crimes are often complex and law enforcers are often understaffed, under-resourced and lacking technical expertise to investigate effectively.

Question 19

Explain how the delabelling makes corporate crime ‘invisible’

Answer 19

At the level of laws and legal regulation, corporate crime is consistently filtered out from the process of criminalisation.

For example, offences are often defined as civil not criminal, and even in criminal cases, penalties are often fines rather than jail.

Question 20

Explain how under reporting makes corporate crime ‘invisible’

Answer 20

Often the victim is society at large or the environment, rather than just one identifiable individual. Individuals may be unaware that they have been victimised (you may not realise you have been illegally duped into buying the wrong mortgage). Even when victims are aware, they may not regard it as a real crime. Equally, they may feel powerless against a big organisation and so may never report the offence to the authorities.

Question 21

How can the invisibility of corporate crime be criticised?

Answer 21

Since the financial crisis of 2008, the activities of a range of different people have made corporate crime more visible. For example:
- campaigns against corporate tax avoidance such as OCCUPY.
- investigative journalists
- whistleblowers inside companies and the media
- neoliberal policies such as marketisation and privatisation of public services means large corporations are much more involved in people’s lives and are under much more public scrutiny than in the past.

Question 22

What are the explanations of white collar and corporate crime?

Answer 22

Strain theory
Differential association
Labelling theory
Marxism

Question 23

How is strain theory an explanation of corporate crime?

Answer 23

If a company can’t achieve its goal of maximising profit by legal means, they will do it illegally by breaking the law.

For example, Clinard + Yeager found law violations by large companies increased as their financial performance deteriorated, suggesting a willingness to innovate to achieve profit goals.

Question 24

How is differential association an explanation of corporate crime?

Answer 24

Sutherland sees crime as behaviour learned from others in a social context - the more we associate people with criminal attitudes, the more likely we are to become deviant ourselves.

If a company’s culture justifies committing crimes to achieve corporate goals, employees will be socialised into this criminality.

E.g. Geis found that individuals joining companies where illegal price-fixing was practised became involved in it as part of their socialisation.

Question 25

Which 2 concepts can we link differential association to?

Answer 25

Deviant subcultures
Techniques of neutralisation

Question 26

Explain how deviant subcultures links to differential association

Answer 26

Deviant subcultures are groups who share a set of norms and values at odds with those of wider society. They offer deviant solutions to their members’ shared problems.

Company employees face problems of achieving corporate goals and may adopt deviant means to do so, socialising new members into these. The culture of business also promotes competitive, aggressive personality types who are willing to commit crime to achieve success.

Question 27

Explain how techniques of neutralisation links to differential association

Answer 27

Sykes + Matza argue individuals can deviate more easily if they can produce justifications to neutralise moral objections to their misbehaviour. E.g. white collar crime criminals say they were carrying out orders from above, blame the victim or normalise their deviance by claiming ‘everyone’s doing it’.
Learning these techniques is an important part of socialisation into a deviant corporate culture.

Question 28

How is labelling theory an explanation of corporate crime?

Answer 28

The middle class are more able to negotiate non-criminal labels for their misbehaviour.

Sociologists use the term de-labelling. Unlike the poor, businesses and professionals have the power to avoid labelling. They can afford expensive lawyers and accountants to help them avoid activities they are involved in such as tax avoidance schemes, or to get any charges reduced.

In addition, the inability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute due to lack of resources, reduces the number of offences officially recorded. This means sociologists who rely on official records and statistics will inevitably underestimate the extent of these offences.

Question 29

How is Marxism an explanation of corporate crime?

Answer 29

Because capitalism’s goal is to maximise profits, it inevitably causes harm such as deaths and injuries among employees and consumers.

Capitalism has successfully created a ‘mystification’ - spread the view that corporate crime is less widespread or harmful than WC crime.
Capitalism’s control of the state means it is able to avoid making or enforcing laws that conflict with its interests.

Only some corporate crime is prosecuted and Pearce argues this sustains the illusion that it is the exception rather than the norm, and thus avoids causing a crisis of legitimacy for capitalism.

In developing countries capitalism shows its true face - selling unsafe products, paying low wages for work in dangerous conditions and polluting the environment.

Question 30

How was Marxism been combined with strain theory?

Answer 30

Box sees corporations as criminogenic because they resort to illegal techniques aimed at competitors, consumers and the public if legitimate opportunities for profit are blocked.

Question 31

Evaluate

Answer 31

• both strain theory and Marxism seem to over-predict the amount of business crime e.g. Nelken argues it is unrealistic to assume all businesses would offend if it wasn’t for the risk of punishment - maintaining good will is more important.
• doesn’t explain crime in non-profit making state agencies such as the police, army or civil service.
• law abiding may be more profitable that law breaking.