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Crimes of the Powerful - Topic3 - Coggle Diagram
Crimes of the Powerful - Topic3
Sutherland - White Collar + Corporate Crimes
White Collar Crime
- Crimes committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation.
Occupational Crime
- Committed by employees simply for their own personal gain against the organisation for which they work.
Corporate Crime
- Committed by employees for the organisation in the pursuit of its goals e.g. deliberately misselling products to increase company profits.
Pearce + Tombs
define white collar crime as "any illegal act that is the result of deliberate decisions by a legitimate business organisation that is intended to benefit the business"
This definition widens the scope of what falls into white collar crime as often some actvities don't break the criminal law.
The Scale + Types of Corporate Crime
Corporate crimes have massive costs physical, environmental and economic. It's also widespread so it's a greater threat compared to WC street crime.
Financial Crime
: Tax evasion, bribery, money laundering. Victims are usually shareholders, taxpayers and govts.
State Corporate Crime
: Harms committed when govt institutions and businesses cooperate to pursure their goals e.g. marketised/privatised public services (education).
Crimes Against Consumers
: False labelling and selling unfit goods e.g. Poly Implant were filling breast implants with dangerous industrial sillicone rather than expensive medical ones. French govt recommended that women get them removed.
Crimes Against Employees
: Sexual/racial discrimination, violations of wage laws, rights to join a union, health and safety laws. e.g. 1100 work related deaths involve employers breaking the law.
Crimes Against the Environment
: Illegal pollution of air,water and land i.e. toxic waste dumping
Abuse of Trust
High status professionals have positions of trust and respectability.
Accountants and lawyers can be employed by criminal organisations e.g. laundering criminal funds into legitmate businesses, inflating fees, committing forgery.
Health professions can also be involved in criminal activity.
The USA has seen an increase of fraudulent claims to insurance companies for treatments that haven't been performed.
UK dentists have claimed payments from the NHS for treatments they haven't done.
The Invisibility of Corporate Crime
Crimes of the powerful are relatively invisible even when they're not seen as 'real crime' at all.
The media gives very
little coverage to corporate crime
, reinforcing the stereotype that crime is a WC phenomenon. - Corporate crime uses
sanitised language
e.g. embezzlement becomes accounting irregularities, deaths at work are accidents, customers as mis-selling.
Lack of political will to tackle corporate crime
politicians rhetoric/emphasis on street crime.
The crimes are often complex and law enforcers are often understaffed
. They are under-resourced, lacking the technical expertise to investigate effectively.
De-labelling
: Corporate crimes are often filtred out from the process of criminalisation e.g. offences are defined as civil matters not criminal, fines are given rather than jail time.
Under-reporting
: Individuals may be unaware that they have been victimised. If they are, they may not realise it's a crime. People may feel powerless against a big organisation so they won't report to authorities.
Partial Visability
Since the financial crisis in 2008, corporate crime has become more visibility.
Campaigns against corporate tax avoidance has been rising.
Neo-liberal policies mean that large corporations are much more involved in people's lives and become more exposed to public scrutiny than before.