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Class, power and crime - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Sutherlands aim was to challenge stereotype that crime is purely a lower class phenomenon, his definition fails to distinguish between 2 different types of crime:
        
        Occupational crime- committed by employees for their their personal gain, against organisations
        
        Corporate crime- committed by employees for their organisation in pursuit of its goal
      - Another problem is that many of the harms caused by the powerful do not break the criminal law
    - - White collar and corporate crimes do far more harm than street crime such as theft and burglary.
      - Tombs (2013) notes that corporate crime has enormous costs: physical, environmental, economic. Concludes that corporate crime is not just the work of a few people but it is the work of a group
      - Corporate crime covers a wide range of acts and omissions:
        
        Financial crimes- tax evasion, bribery, money laundering and illegal accounting.victims include other companies, shareholders, taxpayers and government
        
        Crime against customers- such a false labelling and selling unfit goods
        
        Crimes against employees- such as sexual and racial discrimination, violation of wage laws, right to join a union or take industrial action and health and safety laws.
        
        Crimes against the environment- 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 goal
    - - High status professionals occupy positions of trust and respectability
        Carrabine et al note we trust them with our finances, our health, our security and our personal information however their position and status give them the opportunity to abuse this trust
  - - - The media- give very limited coverage to corporate crimes, reinforcing the stereotype that crime is a working class phenomenon
      - Lack of political will- politicians focus on street crime
      - The crimes are often complex- law enforcers are often understaffed, under-resourced and lack expertise to investigate
      - De-labelling-corporate crime is consistently filtered out from the process of criminalisation
      - Under reporting- often the victim is society at large or the environment rather than an individual, individuals may be unaware of the crime and it can be seen as not a real crime so not reported.
  - - - Strain theory and marxists overpredict the amount of business crime
      - Does Not explain non profit crime
- - - - Marxists believe this damage to the working class and marxists may give a rise to crime: poverty may mean crime is the only way to serve for working class, crime may be the only way they can obtain the consumer goods encouraged by capitalist advertising which results in utilitarian such as theft, lack of control over lives may lead to frustration and aggression=violence and vandalism
      - Capitalistis also commit white collar crimes which could be due to the desire for self enrichment and need for profit. This is called ‘crimes of the powerful’
      - David Gordon argues crime is a rational response to the capitalist system and it is found in all social classes, even though official statistics show working class as the phenomenon
    - - The ruling class also have the power to prevent the introduction of laws that would threaten their interests. Sinder (1993) argues that the capitalist state is reluctant to pass laws that regulate the activities of businesses or threaten their profitability
      - Selective enforcement- marxists argue with labelling theorists that although all classes commit crime but when it comes to the application of the law by the criminal justice system there is elective enforcement. Powerless groups such as the working class and minority ethnic groups are criminalised, the police and courts tend to ignore the crimes of the powerful.
    - - Frank Pearce (1976) argues that such laws often benefit the ruling class too, keeping workers fit for work. By giving capitalism a caring face such laws also create false consciousness among the workers.
      - Because the state enforces the law selectively, crime appears to be largely a problem of the working class by encouraging workers to blame the criminals for their problems rather than capitalism.
- - - - The dier origins of the deviant act
      - The immediate origins of the deviant act(context in which the individual decides to commit the act)
      - The act itself(meaning for the actor)
      - The immediate origins of social reaction (police, family, community)
      - The wider origins of social reaction
      - The effect of labelling