Social Distribution of Crime by Social Class
ALL LINKED TO FUNCTIONALISM AND MARXISM THEORIES OF CRIME
60% of 2,000 prisoners had claimed benefits- 2014
60% of prisoners in Glasgow come from deprived council estates- 2005 Houchin.
67% offenders were unemployed prior to prison, 32% wee homeless, and 27% brought up in care- 2002.
43% of adult prisoners had no educational qualifications- 2014.
Marxism and Class
According to Marxists, crime is inevitable in capitalist societies because capitalism is criminogenic.
Capitalism endorses the unequal divide between classes, therefore committing crime is sometimes the only way people can live their desired life.
Within the CJS, there is a selected bias when applying the law.
According to Snider, the capitalist state is reluctant to pass laws that regulate the activities of businesses or threaten their profitability.
According to Pearce, false consciousness of an impartial judiciary that is professional allows this to go unchallenged as the law is seen as caring.
Chambliss argues that laws safeguarding private property form the foundation of capitalist society.
the ruling class holds significant influence, enabling them to block legislation that might undermine their interests.
They achieve this through lobbying Parliament, funding political parties, and devising intricate systems to sidestep regulations.
E.g. Bernie Ecclestone donated £1 million to the Labour Party in 1997, shortly before the government announced Formula 1 would be exempt from a proposed ban on tobacco advertising- despite it being a key manifesto pledge.
Evaluation
Ignores relationships between crime and other social factors.
Too deterministic is assuming all working class people commit crime.
If capitalism was criminogenic, why does it occur in communist societies?
No all capitalist societies have high crime rates.
the CJS do sometimes act against the interests of the ruling class by punishing corporate crime.
Cultural Explanations for Working Class Criminality
Cohen argued criminality wasn’t always about a lack of money, rather status frustration.
Cloward and Ohlin argue that violence could be used to achieve status with peer groups.
Miller argued working class Americans turns to criminality to meet their focal concerns e.g. toughness and excitement which were restrained in the workplace.
Murray argued that young men break the law to supplement benefits in their laziness and irresponsibility in a culture of welfare dependency.
Women from low status backgrounds meet their consume desire through conspicuous consumption- Individuals, despite being on benefits, are willing to get themselves into debt through hire purchases of luxury items on order to construct an identity.
They believe that they deserve “Posh” items despite being poor- they gain status by showing off to their mates.
Evaluation- Crime can be structurally embedded rather than choice of the individual.
The lack of cultural and material capital can create an impact.
However, the process of criminalisation deems working/ underclass crime to be the issue- it overlooks white collar innovation.
High status Crime
Approximately 150 workers are killed in accidents at work each year.
Salmonella and campylobacter (infection from raw poultry) kill 100-200 people per year in the UK.
Air pollution is estimated to contribute to 24,000 deaths each year in the UK.
Over 32.4 million complaints were made for the PPI scandal.
The offenders in these sorts of crimes do not fit the stereotype of a typical criminal, therefore their offences are difficult to detect and are often dealt with enforcement actions rather than criminal prosecution.
This is because these crimes are White collar and corporate crimes.
White Collar Crime (WCC) and Corporate Crime (CC)
Sutherland- White collar crime is a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation.
His aim was to challenge the stereotype that crime is purely a lower-class phenomenon, however, his definition fails to distinguish between two different types of crime.
Occupational Crime- committed by employees simply for their own personal gain, often against the organisation for which they work. e.g. stealing from the company or its customers.
Corporate Crime- committed by employees for their organisation in pursuit of its goals. e.g. deliberately mis-selling products to increase company profits.
These two types of crimes usually focused on utilitarian gain and forms of WCC are:
Embezzlement- withdrawing resources for the individual’s own gain.
Example- Bernie Madoff used a Ponzi scheme to embezzle money from investors in his own company. Madoff would borrow money from one investor, then repay them with money borrowed from others. As word spread, more investors would come forward to lend money- most were not repaid. Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in 2008, having embezzled $50 billion during the course of his scheme.
Insider trading- using inside knowledge of a company’s practices to profit on stock markets. Common form of crime but difficult to prove.
Example- US TV personality Martha Stewart was convicted of insider trading in 2001. Sold shares in drug company having been informed that its new cancer drug would not be approved. Made $250,000 just before stock price collapsed from $50 to $10.
Tax evasion- failure to declare resources allocated to individual as part of employment
Example- Panama Papers-2016- 11.5 million documents detailing financial transactions of nearly 250,000 individuals, were leaked to the press. Lionel Messi and Simon Cowell were others evading tax.
Bribery- accepting payments in return for awarding contracts to suppliers or providing information on company.
Furthermore, many of the harms caused by the powerful do not break criminal law. For example, some may be administrative offences such as a company failing to comply with codes of practice laid down by government regulators.
To overcome this problem, Pearce and Tombs widen the definition- Corporate crime is 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 breaches of civil and administrative law, not just criminal law.
The scale and types of corporate crime
One estimate puts the cost of white collar crimes in the USA at over 10 times that of ordinary crimes.
Tombs- corporate crimes have enormous costs: physical (deaths, injuries, and illnesses), environmental (pollution) and economic (to consumers, workers, taxpayers and governments).
Corporate crime covers a wide range of acts and omissions.
Financial crimes- such as tax evasion, bribery, money laundering and illegal accounting. Victims include other companies, shareholders, taxpayers and governments.
Crimes against consumers- such as false labelling and selling unfit goods (including “food crime”). In 2011, the French government recommended that women with breast implants form the manufacturer, Poly implant Prothese, have these removed because they were filled with dangerous industrial silicone rather than more expensive medical silicone. Some 300,000 implants had been sold in 65 countries.
Crimes against employees- such as sexual and racial discrimination, violations of wages laws, of rights to join a union or take industrial action, and of health and safety laws.
Tombs calculates that up to 1,100 work-related death a year involve employers breaking the law, which is more than the annual total of homicides.
Crimes against the environment- include illegal pollution of air, water and land, such as toxic waste dumping.
State-corporate crime- refers to the harms committed when government institutions and businesses cooperate to pursue their goals.
For example, private companies contracted to the US military have been accused of involvement in the torture of detainees during the American occupation of Iraq.
Explanations of CC
Organisational Cultures
Both Tombs and Snider have suggested the culture of corporations leads to behaviours linked to criminality.
Excessive competition leads to “risk-taking” behaviours- placing profit over the rights of people, making decision making unethical.
Most competitive usually in positions to influence culture of organisations but removed from actual acts of criminality.
Role of Capitalism
“Dog eat dog” nature of capitalism leads to businesses employing illegitimate methods to get ahead, according to Gordon. E.g. false accounting, cheaper suppliers.
Cutting costs to boost profits may lead to circumventing health and safety legislation, employment law or environmental concerns. E.g. Grenfell Tower.
Strain Theory
Strain can lead businesses to innovate in order to achieve the success of the American dream, using illegitimate means.
Use of illegitimate means in order to maintain profits year on year to appease shareholders.
Innovation can be legal- however, often has a human or environmental impact, acting immorally.
Punishment of Corporate Crime
Deregulation of laws governing corporations has led to an increase in corporate crime- less risk in breaking regulations/ getting caught.
Tombs and Whyte 2013- decrease of over a third in health and safety inspections since 2000 in the UK, allowing more corporations to put in their own regulations.
When caught and punished, corporations are fined- but this does not act as a disincentive due to fines being low in relation to turnover. Fines can be paid off/ offset by raising the price of their product, indirectly making the consumer pay for the corporation’s crimes.
Process of Globalisation
Process of globalisation has led big corporations to move to countries with less legislation, due to more interconnectedness.
Economic power of these companies gives them more power than governments of these nations, enabling them to govern the governments indirectly.
Nations actively court transactional corporations to boost employment and gain political favour.
However, this can cause environmental damage, health and safety catastrophes and human exploitation. E.g. apple using third world countries and slave labour “unknowingly” to harvest cobalt, titanium and aluminium.
De-labelling of Corporate Crime
Big corporations are able to escape the impact of negative labelling for crime with public relation firms. E.g. Nestle has been involved in numerous scandals, notoriously the baby milk scandal in the 1970s/ 80s, but continues to be one of the largest transnational companies.
Individuals will often be labelled as criminals, but those committing crimes on behalf of a corporation will escape labelling.
Corporate criminals often continue to trade successful despite temporary negative publicity for actions.