Marxist Theories of Crime & Deviance 3
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- Created on: 29-09-20 14:17
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- Marxist Theories of Crime & Deviance 3
- The Abuse of Trust
- High status professionals occupy positions of trust and respectability
- Carrabine et al. (2014) argued that people entrust professionals with their finances, health etc thus giving them the opportunity to abuse this trust
- According to Sunderland, white collar crime violates the trust that society places in professionals, promotes cynicism and undermines the fabric of society
- Carrabine et al. (2014) argued that people entrust professionals with their finances, health etc thus giving them the opportunity to abuse this trust
- Examples of the abuse of trust:
- Tyson foods were dumping 104 million LBS of pollution into American Waterways
- Harold Shipman was convicted of killing his patients when he was a GP
- High status professionals occupy positions of trust and respectability
- The Invisibility of Corporate Crime
- Compared with street crime, the crimes of the powerful remain relatively invisible. There are several reasons for this:
- The Media
- Gives very limited coverage to corporate crime as street crime is more interesting
- Lack of political will
- Politicians are tough on street crime but tend not to care about street crime
- Complexity of crime
- The crimes are often very complex and therefore the police do not have the resources to investigate corporate crime
- De-labelling
- Corporate crime is not seen as criminal but more of a civil issue so punishments rarely involve jail time
- Undereporting
- People often do not know they are a victim of corporate crime
- Partial visiblity
- Recently, big companies have had to be more transparent with their business as there are more people aware of corporate crimes
- The Media
- Compared with street crime, the crimes of the powerful remain relatively invisible. There are several reasons for this:
- Explanations of corporate crime
- Strain Theory
- Merton's anomie or strain theory argues that deviance results from the inability of some people to achieve societal goals in legitimate ways
- Box (1983) argues that the same principles could explain corporate crime e:g companies cannot maximise profits legally so they break the law
- Braithwaite's (1984) study of drug industry found companies are willing to fabricate results in order to have products adopted by customers to increase profits
- Differential Association
- Sutherland (1949) sees crime as behaviour learned from others in social context
- The less we associate with people who hold law abiding attitudes and more with people with criminal attitudes then we are more likely to become deviant
- Because of this, if a company's culture justifies committing crimes to achieve corporate goals then employees will be socialised into criminality
- Geis (1969) found that individuals joining companies which practised illegal price fixing became involved as part of their association
- Because of this, if a company's culture justifies committing crimes to achieve corporate goals then employees will be socialised into criminality
- The less we associate with people who hold law abiding attitudes and more with people with criminal attitudes then we are more likely to become deviant
- Sutherland (1949) sees crime as behaviour learned from others in social context
- Labelling Theory
- Cicourel (1968)
- Middle class are able to negotiate non criminal labels for their misbehaviour (e:g 'youthful spirits' rather than 'vandalism'
- Nelken (2012)
- Middle class can afford experts to help avoid their activities being labelled as criminal (e:g tax avoidance)
- De-labelling of illegal makes it difficult to measure true extent of corporate crime
- Cicourel (1968)
- Marxism
- Box (1983) 'Mystification' of corporate crime spreads the idea that corporate crime is rare and not as damaging as WC crime
- Pearce (1976) Capitalism controls the state and selective law enforcement so keep the illusion that corporate crime is rare
- Evaluation of explanations of corporate crime
- Strengths
- Provides explanations for why corporate crime does not seem like a big deal
- Weaknesses
- Assumes all companies commit corporate crime though not all of them do
- Strengths
- Strain Theory
- The Abuse of Trust
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