Crimes Of The Powerful

What do Marxists note?

That although all classes commit crime, the law is selectively enforced so that higher-class and corporate offenders are less likely to be prosecuted.

What does Reiman and Leighton’s book show?

That the more likely a crime is to be committed by higher class people, the less likely it is to be treated as an office. There is a much higher rate of prosecutions for typical ‘street‘ crimes that poor people commit, such as burglary and assault.

With the crimes committed by the higher classes, such as serious tax evasion, what view does the CJS take?

A more forgiving view.

Who coined the term ‘white collar crime‘?

Sutherland.

How does Sutherland define white collar crime?

As ‘a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation‘.

What was Sutherland’s aim?

To challenge the stereotype that crime is purely a lower-class phenomenon.

What does Sutherland’s definition of white collar crime fail to distinguish between?

Two different types of crime:

• Occupational crime.

• Corporate crime.

What is occupational crime?

Crime committed by employees simply for their own personal gain, often against the organisation for which they work, like stealing from the company or its customers.

What is corporate crime?

Crime committed by employees for their organisation in pursuit of its goals.

Where does a further problem come from in class and crime?

Many of the harms caused by the powerful do not break criminal law. However, this is overcome by Pearce and Tombs.

What do Pearson and Tombs widen the definition of corporate crime to?

Any illegal act or omission that is the result of deliberate decisions or culpable negligence by a legitimate business organisation and that is intended to benefit the business. This includes sreaches of civil and administrative law, not just criminal law.

What does Tombs argue

That the differences between these (high/lower class) crimes is more about who has the power to define an act as a crime rather than about how harmful the act is: powerful corporations can influence the law so that their actions are not criminalised.

Which crimes do more harm, ordinary (theft, burglary, ect) or white collar and corporate crime?

White collar and corporate. For example, one estimate puts the cost of white collar crimes in the USA at over ten times that of ordinary crimes.

What does Tombs note?

That corporate crime has enormous costs: physical (deaths, injuries and illnesses), environmental (pollution) and economic (to consumers, workers, taxpayers and governments).

What does Tombs conclude?

That corporate crime is not just the work of a few ‘bad apples‘, but rather it is ‘widespread, routine and pervasive‘.

What does corporate crime cover?

A wide range of acts and omissions, including:

• Financial crimes.

• Crimes against consumers.

• Crimes against employees.

• Crimes against the environment.

• State-corporate crime.

What are financial crimes?

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

What are crimes against consumers?

These include false labelling and selling unfit goods.

In 2011, what did the French government recommend?

That women with breast implants from a certain manufacturer have them removed because they were filled with dangerous industrial silicone rather than more expensive medical silicone.

What are crimes against employees?

This includes sexual and racial discrimination, violations of wage laws, of rights to join a union or take industrial action, and of health and safety laws.

What does Tombs calculate?

That up to 1,100 work-related deaths a year involve employers breaking the law. This is more than the annual total of homicides.

What does Palmer estimate?

That occupational diseases cause 50,000 deaths a year in the UK.

What do crimes against the government include?

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

What does state corporate crime refer to?

The harms committed when government institutions and businesses cooperate to pursue their goals.

Why is state corporate crime an increasingly important area?

Because private companies now work alongside government in many areas, for example in marketised or privatised public services like education.

What have private companies contracted to the US military been accused of?

Involvement in the torture of detainees during the American occupation of Iraq.

What do high-status professionals occupy?

Positions of trust and respectability.

What does Carrabine et al. note?

That we entrust these high-end professionals with our finances, our health, our security and our personal information. However, their position and status give them opportunity to abuse this trust.

Who can accountants and lawyers be employed by?

Criminal organisations, for example to launder criminal funds into legitimate businesses. They can also act corruptly by inflating fees, committing forgery, illegally diverting clients’ money, etc.

What does the respected status, expertise and autonomy of health professionals also afford scope for?

Criminal activity. The USA has also seen huge numbers of fraudulent claims to insurance companies for treatments that have not actually been performed, while in the UK, dentists have claimed payments from the NHS for patients they have not carried out.

What is perhaps the most notorious case of abuse of trust?

GP: Harold Shipman. In 2000, he was convicted in the murder of 15 of his patients, but over the course of the previous 23 years, he is believed to have murdered at least another 200.

What does crime like that of Shipman violate?

The trust that society places in professionals.

In Sutherland’s view, what does the violation of trust that society places in professionals do?

It makes white collar crime a greater threat to society than working class ‘street‘ crime because it promotes cynicism and distrust of basic social institutions and undermines the fabric of society.

Despite the abuse of trust, are corporate crimes of the powerful recognised?

When compared with street crime, the crimes of the powerful are relatively invisible; and even when visible, they are often not seen as ‘real‘ crime at all. There are several reasons for this?

What are the different reasons for the invisibility of corporate crime?

• The media.

• The lack of political will.

• The crimes are often complex.

• De-labelling.

• Under-reporting.

What role does the media play in the invisibility of corporate crime?

They give very limited coverage to corporate crime, thus reinforcing the stereotype that crime is a working-class phenomenon. They describe corporate crime in sanitised language, for example, embezzlement becomes ‘accounting irregularities‘

How does a lack of political will contribute to the invisibility of corporate crime?

Politicians rhetoric of being ‘tough on crime‘ is focused instead on street crime. For example, while the Home Office uses surveys to discover the true extent of ‘ordinary‘ crime, it does not do so for corporate crime.

How does crimes being complex contribute to the invisibility of corporate crime?

Law enforcers are often understaffed, under-resources and lacking technical expertise to investigate effectively.

What is the role of de-labelling in the invisibility of corporate crime?

At the level of laws and legal regulation, corporate crime is consistently filtered out from the process of criminalisation. For example, offences are defined as civil and not criminal, and even in criminal cases, penalties are often fines rather than jail. Investigation and prosecution are also limited.

What is the role of under-reporting in the invisibility of corporate crime?

Often the victim is society at large, or the environment, rather than an identifiable individual. Individuals may be unaware that they have been victimised. Even when victims are aware, they may not regard it as ‘real crime‘. Equally, they may feel powerless against a big organisation and so may never report the offence to the authorities.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, what may have the activities of a range of different people made corporate crime?

More visible.

What do neoliberal policies such as the marketisation and privatisation of public services mean?

That large corporations are much more involved in people’s lives thus more exposed to public scrutinty than in the past.

What does Merton’s strain theory argue?

That deviance results from the inability of some people to achieve the goals that society’s culture prescribes by using legitimate means.

What did Merton apply his concept of innovation to explain?

Working class crime, but others have used it to explain corporate crime.

What does Box argue?

That if a company cannot achieve its goal of maximising profit by legal means, it may employ illegal ones instead. Thus, when business conditions become more difficult and profitability is squeezed, companies may be tempted to break the law.

What did Clinard and Yeager find?

That law violations by large companies increased as their financial performance deteriorated, suggesting a willingness to ‘innovate‘ to achieve profit goals.

What does Sutherland see crime as?

Behaviour learned from others in a social context: the less we associate with people who hold attitudes favourable to the law and the more we associate with people with criminal attitudes, the more likely we are to become deviant criminals. (Differential association)

In Sutherland’s view, if a company’s culture justifies committing crimes to achieve corporate goals, what will employees be socialised into?

This criminality. Geis found that individuals joining companies where illegal price-fixing was practiced became involved in it as part of their socialisation.

What can we link the idea of differential association to?

Two other concepts:

• Deviant subcultures.

• Techniques of neutralisation.

What are deviant subcultures?

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.

How can deviant subcultures be applied to corporate crime?

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

What do Skyes and Matza argue?

That individuals can deviate more easily if they can produce justifications to neutralise moral objections to their behaviour.

What does whether an act counts as a crime or not depend on?

Whether it has been successfully labelled as such. Typically, it is the working class who are more likely to have their actions defined as crime.

As Ciourel shows, what are the middle class more able to do?

Negotiate non-criminal labels for their misbehaviour. (e.g as ‘youthful high spirits‘ rather than ‘vandalism‘). (De-labelling).

What have sociologists applied de-labelling to?

White collar and corporate crimes, in an approach that Nelken calls de-labelling, or nonlabelling.

Unlike the poor, what do businesses and professionals often have the power to do?

Avoid labelling: for example, they can afford expensive experts such as lawyers and accountants to help them avoid activities they are involved in, such as tax avoidance schemes, being labelled criminal, or to get to the seriousness of any charges reduced.

What does the reluctance or inability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute also reduce?

The number of offences officially recorded as such, meaning sociologists who rely on official records and statistics will inevitably under-estimate the extent of these offences..

What are Clinard and Yeager criticised for?

Taking law enforcement agency records for granted as true measures of the extent of corporate crime.

For Marxists, what is corporate crime a result of?

The normal functioning of capitalism. In this view, because capitalism’s goal is to maximise profits, it inevitably causes harm, such as deaths and injuries among employees and consumers.

Whilst also causing crime, what has capitalism successfully created?

What Box calls a ‘mystification‘ - it has spread the ideology that corporate crime is less widespread or harmful than working-class crime.

What does Capitalism’s control of the state mean that it is able to do?

Avoid making or enforcing laws that conflict with its interests. While some corporate crime is prosecuted, this is only ever the tip of the iceberg.

As Pearce argues, what the small number of corporate crimes that are prosecuted sustain?

The illusion that it is the exception rather than the norm,and thus avoids causing a crisis of legitimacy for capitalism.

What have some sociologists combined Marxism with>

Other approaches such as strain theory.

Why does Box see corporations as criminogenic?

Because, if they find legitimate opportunities for profit are blocked, they will resort to illegal techniques aimed at competitors, consumers or the public.

When will companies comply with the law?

Only if they see it enforced strictly; where effective controls are lacking, for exampleThe amount of bu in developing countries, capitalism shows its true face, selling unsafe products, paying low wages for work in dangerous conditions, polluting the environment and bribing officials.

What do both strain theory and Marxists explanations of corporate crime seem to over-predict?

The amount of business crime.

What does Nelksen argue?

That it is unrealistic to assume that all businesses would offend were it not the risk of punishment.

Even if capitalist pursuit of profit is a cause of corporate crime, what does this not explain?

Crime in non-utilitarian profit making state agencies such as the police, army or civil service.

What may law abiding be more profitable than?

Law breaking.