Crimes of the Powerful
- Created by: chocolateflavouredmilk
- Created on: 01-03-20 14:56
View mindmap
- Crimes of the Powerful
- White Collar and Corporate Crime
- White collar crime is defined as ' a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.
- There are two different types of crime
- Occupational crime: committed by employees for their own perosnal gain, often against the organisation they work for e.g. stealing from the company,
- Corporate Crime: committed by the employees for their organisation in pursuit of its goal e.g. mis-selling products to increase company's profit.
- Many of the harms caused by the powerful do not break the criminal law
- Tombs argues that the difference between these types of offences is more about who has the power to define an act as a crime than about how harmful the act is.
- The Scale and Types of Corporate Crime
- White collar crime and corporate crimes do far more harm than ordinary or street crime.
- Tombs notes that corporate crime has enormous costs: physical (deaths, injuries and illnesses), environmental (pollution) and economic (to consumers, workers, taxpayers and governments).
- Corporate crime covers a wide range of acts and omissions including the following
- Financial crimes.
- Crimes against consumers.
- Crimes against employees.
- Crimes against the environment.
- Self-corporate crime.
- This is important because private companies now work alongside the government in many areas.
- For example, private companies contracted in the US military have been accused of involvement in the torture of Iraqi detainees.
- The Abuse of Trust
- High-statis professionals occupy positions of trust and respectability such as finances, health, security and personal information.
- Carrabine et a; argues that their positions and status give them opportunity to abuse this trust.
- Accountants and lawyers can be employed by criminal organisations and can also act corruplty by inflating fees, committing forgey and illegal diverting of money.
- Sutherland argues that this makes white collar crime a greater threat to society.
- This is because it promotes cynicism and distrust of basic social institutions and undermines the fabric of society.
- High-statis professionals occupy positions of trust and respectability such as finances, health, security and personal information.
- Invisibility of Corporate Crime
- Compared with street crime, the crimes of the powerful are relatively invisible, and when not, they are often not seen as 'real' crime.
- The media: gives limited coverage to corporate crime, they describe corporate crime in sanitised language, as technical infringements rather than real crime.
- Lack of political will: politicians being tough on crime is focused on street crime and not corporate crime.
- The crimes are often complex: law enforcers are often understaffed, under-resourced and lacking technical expertise to investigate effectively.
- De-labelling: corporate crime is consistently filtered out from the process of criminalisation.
- White Collar and Corporate Crime
Comments
No comments have yet been made