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Class, Power and Crime - Coggle Diagram
Class, Power and Crime
Explaining class differences in crime:
- Functionalism: Law reflects shared societal values. Crime results from inadequate or inappropriate socialisation into these values. Different groups may develop distinct subcultures. Miller - lower class has an independent subculture with norms that clash with mainstream culture = higher crime rates
- Strain theory (Merton): Deviant behaviour occurs when legitimate opportunities to achieve goals are blocked. American culture highly values 'money success', but class structure denies WC legitimate opportunities. Blockage leads to seeking illegitimate means to achieve wealth and success
- Subcultural theories: Cohen (status frustration) - WC youth culturally deprived leading to educational failure and low status = status frustration. Form or join delinquent subcultures that invert mainstream values
- Illegitimate opportunity structures (Cloward and Ohlin): Varied WC crime based on different illegitimate opportunity structures. Criminal subculture - stable WC areas, offer professional criminal careers. Conflict subculture - poor areas with high pop turnover, gang violence and turf wars. Retreatist subculture - dropout drug subcultures those fail legitimately and illegitimately
- Labelling theory: Rejects official stats = social constructs. Focus on labelling process (how and why labelled as criminal). Emphasis stereotypes and power.
Marxism, class and crime
Criminogenic Capitalism:
- Crime is inevitable: capitalism, by its nature, causes crime because it's based on the exploitation of the WC for profits
- WC crime: Poverty - crime may be means of survival. Consumerism - crime may be way to obtain goods promoted by capitalist advertising. Alienation - frustration and lack of control over lives can lead to non-utilitarian crimes
- Ruling-class crime: capitalism's 'dog-eat-dog' competition and profit motive encourage greed and self-interest, leading capitalists to commit white-collar and corporate crimes
- Crime across classes: Gordon - crime is a rational response to capitalism and is found in all social classes, despite official stats suggesting it's largely WC phenomenon
The state and law making:
- Serving capitalist interests
- Protection of private property: Chambliss - laws protecting private property are fundamental to capitalism. With the introduction of English law in East African colonies to force locals to work on plantations by imposing cash tax, making non-payment a criminal offence.
- Prevention of threatening laws: ruling class has power to block laws that would threaten their interests. Snider - capitalist state is reluctant to regulate businesses or threaten profitability
- Selective enforcement: CJS criminalises powerless groups and often ignores crimes of the powerful
Ideological functions of crime and law:
- False consciousness: laws appear to benefit the WC can actually benefit ruling class by maintaining healthy workforce and create a false consciousness by making capitalism seem caring - Pearce
- Weak enforcement: laws not rigorously enforced. Despite 2007 corporate homicide law, only one UK company was successfully prosecuted in its first 8 years, despite many deaths by employer negligence - Jenabi
- Dividing the WC: selective enforcement makes crime appear to be WC problem, diverting blame from capitalism and dividing WC
- Concealing systemic issues: media and some criminologists portray criminals as disturbed individuals, hiding the systemic capitalist causes of crime
Evaluation:
- Strengths:
- Useful explanation of relationship between crime and capitalist society
- Highlight link between law-making/enforcement and capitalist class interests
- Contextualises labelling theory insight on selective law enforcement within a broader structural framework
- Weaknesses:
- Ignores non-class inequalities
- Deterministic and over-predicts crime
- Varying crime rates in capitalist societies
- Occasional prosecutions of the powerful
- Ignores intra-class crime (Left realism)
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Crimes of the powerful
White collar and corporate crime:
- Sutherland: white collar crime = a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.
- Occupational crime = committed by employees for personal gain against their organisation. Corporate crime = committed by employees for their organisation to achieve its goals
- Pearce and Tombs: corporate crime = any illegal act or omission that is the result of deliberate decisions or culpable negligence by legitimate business organisation and that is intended to benefit the business. Breaches of civil and administrative law, not just criminal law. Tombs - distinction between these offences often reflects the power to define acts as criminal, rather than their actual harm
Scale and types of corporate crime:
- Cost: cost white collar crime in USA over 10x that of ordinary crimes
- Impact (Tombs): enormous physical, environmental, economic costs. 'Widespread, routine and pervasive'
- Types:
- Financial: tax evasion, bribery, money laundering; victims = other companies, shareholders, tax payers, govs
- Against consumers: false labelling, selling unfit goods
- Against employees: sexual and racial discrimination, wage violations, denial union rights, health/safety breaches. Tombs estimates up to 1,100 work-related deaths annually involve employers breaking the law. Palmer estimates occupational diseases cause 50,000 deaths a year in UK
- Against environment: illegal pollution, toxic waste dumping
- State-corporate crime (Kramer and Michalowski): harms committed through cooperation between gov institutions and businesses
Abuse of trust:
- Higher professionals occupy positions of trust and respectability. Carrabine et al - we entrust them with out finances, out health, our security and our personal information
- Financial professionals: KPMG paid a $456 million fine in USE for tax fraud. UK tribunal found a tax avoidance scheme by Ernst and Young potentially costing taxpayers over £300 million per year. Accountants and lawyers can launder criminal funds or commit forgery and client fund diversion
Health professionals: Widespread fraudulent insurance claims for unperformed treatments in USA; UK dentists claiming NHS payments for unperformed treatments
- Harold Shipman: convicted murdering 15 patients in 2000, believed to have murdered at least 200 more over 23 years. Despite prior conviction for obtaining drugs by forgery and deceptions, he received only a warning from the General Medical Council and continued practising
- Sutherland - white collar crime is a greater societal threat than street crime because it erodes trust in fundamental social institutions
The invisibility of corporate crime:
- Media coverage: limited coverage' sanitises corporate crimes with terms like 'accounting irregularities' instead of embezzlement etc
- Lack of political will: politicians focus on street crime
- Complexity and resources: corporate crimes are complex; law enforcers are often understaffed, under resourced and lack technical experitse
- De-labelling: offences are often defined as civil rather than criminal. Penalties are often fines. Investigation and prosecution are limited
- Under-reporting: victims often society or the environment. Individuals may be unaware of victimisation or feel powerless against large organisations
Partial visibility: - Since financial crisis of 2008 = increased visibility through campaigns, investigative journalism, whistle-blowers, and media coverage
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