Selective Law Enforcement (Marxist)

Selective Law Enforcement:

• Focus on the crimes of the working class leads to more arrests for petty crimes than for corporate and white-collar crime

• The perception that street crime is more harmful to society and so law enforcement agencies act on street crime

Example:

• In 2019 there were 47,000 knife or sharp instrument-related offences in the UK

• Police and media focused on London as there had been 79 fatal stabbings in London

• In the same year, 69,000 people were seriously injured and 147 people died in work-related accidents

Costs of Crime:

• Snider (1993) argued that corporate and white-collar crime costs society more than street crime

• Individuals involved in corporate crime are rarely prosecuted and even less likely to receive custodial sentences

• Corporate witnesses for the Grenfell inquiry were given immunity from prosecution for testifying

Ideological function of law enforcement:

• Focusing on working-class crime causes misrepresentation of the working class as a criminal

  • Gordon (1976): prosecutions of corporate crimes suggest that the criminal justice system is fair

  • Reiman and Leighton (2009): the US justice system is lenient with middle-class offenders and biased against poor

Evaluations:

• This is evidenced by increased policing of working-class and minority-ethnic areas

• The complex nature of corporate crime and the financial power of companies leads to lower rates of conviction

• National Audit Office - fraud cost private sector businesses an estimated £144bn and individuals £10b in 2015