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Topic 3- Crimes of the powerful - Coggle Diagram
Topic 3- Crimes of the powerful
Reinsman's and Leightons The rich get richer, the poor get prision
This shows that the more likely a crime is to be committed by higher class people, the less likely it is to be treated as an offence.
There is a higher rate of prosecutions for the typical street crimes that poor people commit such as assault. Yet crimes committed by the higher individuals such as serious tax evasion, the justice system takes more of a forgiving approach
White collar and corporate crime
Sutherland defines while collar crime as a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation.
He aim to try to remove the stereotype that crime was just lower class.However his definition fails to distinguish between 2 different types of crime
1) Occupational Crime- Committed by employees for their own personal gain and often against the organisation where they work
2) Corporate Crime- Committed by the employees for their organisation in pursuit of its goals
Evaluation: Many of the harms caused by the powerful do not break the criminal laws eg zero hour contracts harm workers because they are unable to rely on the job or hours to pay bills however its not illegal
To overcome this issue, Pearce and Tombs widen the definition of cooperate crime which includes breaches of civil and administrative law not just criminal law
Types of cooperate crime
Financial Crimes such as tax evasion and money laundering
Crimes against consumers such as false labelling and selling unfit goods
Crimes against employees such as sexual and racial discrimination
The abuse of trust
High status professionals occupy positions of trust and respectability in society. Carrabine notes that we entrust them with our finances, security and personal information. However their position and status gives them the opportunity to abuse that trust
Harold Shipman
In 2000, Shipman was convicted of murder of 15 patients but over 23 years he is believed to have murdered another 200
In 1976 he was convicted of obtaining powerful opiate pethidine by deception and in the same year obtained enough morphine to kill 360 people yet only received a warning and was allowed to continue practising
Reasons why corporate crime may be seen as invisible
The Media- Gives very limited coverage to corperate crime thus reinforcing the stereotype that crime is WC. The media describe corporate crime in standardised language as a technical infringement rather than real crime
Lack of political Will- To tackle corporate crime politicians rhetoric of being tough on crime is focused instead on street crime eg home office surveys doesn't cover corporate crime instead it covers ordinary crime
The crimes are often complex- Law enforcement are often under resourced and lacking technical expertise to investigate effectivly