crimes of the powerful Flashcards
3 key areas
- Definitional issues in defining corporate crime and types of corporate crime
- Invisibilty of corporate crime
- sociological theories of corporate crime: Strain Theory, Labelling, Marxism, Postmodernism, Differential association, control theory
Definitional issues in defining corporate crime and types of corporate crime
Sutherland’s 2 problems
defines white collar crime as a ‘crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation
2 problems
1. A definitional problem
- legal enforcement of white collar crime
1 - this definition fails to distinguished between two different types of crime
occupational crime: crime committed by employees for their own personal gain. e.g stealing from a factory
corporate crime: crime committed by employees for their organisation in pursuit of its goals e.g VW scandal
2 - many of the ‘harms’ caused by the powerful do not actually break the criminal law
many companies are governed by codes of practice, gov regulators or other forms of regulations - rather than laws
many ‘harms’ committed by the powerful are not actually seen as a crime and not enforced by the criminal justice system and do not make it onto official crime stats
Overcoming the problems
Pearce and Tombs - widen the definition to allow for the inclusion of breaches of civil and administrative law
Snider argues corporate crime is more harmful than street crime in terms of money - corp crime costs over 20 times street crime
Tombs - backs up this evidence from Snider and notes that corporate crime has enormous physical, environmental and economic costs - it is ‘widespread, routine and pervasive’
Types of corporate crime
Financial crime - tax evasion - taxpayers
Crime against consumers - selling unfit goods - 2011 dangerous implants containing industrial silicone - female customers
crime against employee - Palmer: occupational diseases case 50,000 deaths in UK per year - workers
crime against environment - illegal pollution of air, water etc - general population
state- corporate crime - harm committed when gov institutions and businesses cooperate to pursue their goals - customers
Examples of abuse of trust
high status individuals in positions of trust and power abuse it e.g KPMG - USA Tax fraud - fined $456 mill
Ernest and Young: tax avoidance - cost taxpayer $300 mill
Invisibilty of corporate crime
- limited media coverage (sanitised lang e.g fraud = mis-selling)
- Lack of political will - to tack corp crime, focus of being tough on ‘street crime’ e.g John major gov
- Corporate crimes are complex
- De-labelling (constantly filtered out of the process of criminalisation, many re-defined as civil and not criminal - dealt with as fines
- Under-reporting - no specific victim (all of society suffers), people feel powerless against big companies
- Hidden from view - Clarke and Croal note corp crime are relatively hidden from public life as seen as ‘appear’ as just doing their job (more on p32)
- Role of the criminal Justice system - offenders have a higher chance of being not guilty due to stereotypes of class (w.c as criminals and m.c as respectable)
Is corporate crime becoming more visible
- in recent years, campaigns against corporate tax avoidance, such as Occupy and UK Uncut which have emerged since the 2008 financial crash
apart from the financial crisis in 2008, new Neo-liberal (new right) policies, such as marketisation and privatisation of public services has meant that large corporations are much more in the public eye than before
sociological theories of corporate crime: Strain Theory, Labelling, Marxism, Postmodernism, Differential association, control theory
Marxism
Box - capitalism had successfully created a ‘mystification’ an ideology that corporate crime is less widespread than w/c crime. Capitalism’s control of law enforcement means they will not usually conflict with their interests
Box - corporations are criminogenic - they will turn to illegitimate means to out-compete other organisations
Evals of marxism
marxism tends to over-predict the amount of corp crime that takes place
Neilkin argues that its unrealistic to assume all businesses would offend if not for the risk of punishment - other factors will hold businesses back from crime
this doesn’t explain crime that takes place in a non-profit organisation such as the police etc
Strain
Strain
Merton - deviance stems from the inability of individuals to achieve societies shared goals so must ‘innovate’ to achieve these goals (e.g material wealth) - often caused by greed
Box - if a company cannot achieve its goal of maximising profits by legal means, it will employ illegal ones instead
Clinard and Yeager - found that law violations by large companies increased as their financial performance deteriorated, suggesting a willingness to ‘innovate’ to achieve profit goals
Control
Control
- individuals who commit corporate crimes to benefit companies are driven by socialisation into aggressive management cultures which encourage ruthless practices
- corp crimes may involve taking illegal shortcuts, which are not really seen doing wrong, but just an extension of acceptable business practices, so there are reduced moral controls about doing wrong
Nelkin - some are successful people who have the material goods associated with success, but may have to go into financial difficulties in maintaining their lifestyles. Strongly tied to social expectations to the point where they will use illegitimate means to resolves finance situations
differential association
Differential association
- crime is learned behaviour from others in the same social context, more time around criminals = deviance
- Geis - individuals joining companies where illegal price-fixing was part of their practice, they became a part of it as part of their socialisation
- Deviant subcultures - groups of people with the same norms and values who find deviant solutions to their problems
- Techniques of Neutralism - loyalty to company seems to override the criminality that individuals are doing. Sykes and Matza - individuals are more likely to deviate if they can produce justification to neutralise their moral objections
labelling theory
Labelling theory
crime depends on the definition placed on it, leading to many w/c acts seen as criminals
circourel - note middle class have more ability to negotiate non-criminal labels for their misbehaviour e.g “youthful high spirits” rather than ‘vandalism”
Nelken - corp crime has been de-labelled as they can afford lawyers etc and stay out of the eye of the law. These crimes go uninvestiagted
Clinard and Yeager - criticised for taking law enforcement agency records for granted as true measure of corp crime
postmodernism
Postmodernism
Katz and Lyng argue crime can be seductive and exciting which can be an incentive for corp crime rather than material gain
Nelkin - world of high finance is surrounded by a subculture of excitement amongst your men making high-risk decisions.
