Class, Power & Crime

Functionalism

• Sees the law as a reflection of society's shared values and crime at the product of inadequate socialisation into these values
• Believe that not everyone is equally well socialised into today's culture and different groups may develop their own separate subcultures
• Miller argues that the lower class has developed an independent subculture with its own distinctive norms and values that clash with those of mainstream culture explaining why they have a higher crime rate

Strain theory

• Argues that people engage in deviant behaviour when legitimate opportunities to achieve are bocked
• As the working clsss are more likely to be denied these opportunities they are more likely to seek illegitimate means of achieving it

Subcultural theories

• The idea that the working class suffer from blocked opportunities to achieve success through legitimate means so find themselves at the bottom of the official status hierarchy
• The delinquent subculture that they form inverts mainstream values such as respect for property and instead commit crime

Labelling theory

• They focus on how and why working class people come to be labelled as criminal
• They reject the view that official statistics give a valid picture of which class commits the most crime

Marxists agree with labelling theorists that the law is enforced disproportionately against the working class but they criticise them for failing to examine the wider structure of capitalism within which law making and offending takes place

Criminogenic capitalism

Crime is inevitable because capitalism is criminogenic. It is based on the exploitation of the working class which is damaging and may give rise to crime. Poverty may mean that crime is the only way the working class can survive, crime may be the only way they can obtain the consumer goods encouraged by advertising resulting in utilitarian crimes such as theft and alienation and lack of control over their lives may lead to frustration resulting in non utilitarian crimes

However, crime is not confined to the working class as capitalism is a dog eats dog system of competition between capitalists. The desire for profit encourages white collar and corporate crimes such as tax evasion

The state and law making

Marxists see law making and enforcement as only serving the interests of the capitalist class such as laws to protect private property are the cornerstone of the capitalist economy. This is illustrated with the introduction of English law into Britain's East African colonies which supplied tea, coffee etc economic interests. The local economy was not a money economy so to force the population to work they introduced a tax payable in cash with non payment resulting in a criminal offence. Since cash to pay the tax could only be earned by working the law served the interests of the capitalists

Selective enforcement

All classes commit crime but when it comes to the application of the law by the criminal justice system, there is a selective enforcement. While powerless groups such as the working class are criminalised, the police ignore the crimes of the powerful

Ideological functions of crime and law

The law, crime and criminals also perform an ideological function for capitalism. Laws are passed which appear to be for the benefit of the working class such as workplace health and safety laws but these laws really just benefit the ruling class by keeping workers fit for work. By giving capitalism a caring face such laws create false consciousness among the workers. As the state enforces the law selectively crime appears to be a mainly working class phenomenon which divides the working class by encouraging them to blame the criminals for their problems and not capitalism.

Criticisms 

• It largely ignores the relationship between crime and non class inequalities such as ethnicity and gender
• It is too deterministic as not all poor people commit crime despite the pressures of poverty
• Communist societies also suffer from crime so it can't be seen as a problem stemming just from capitalism
• The criminal justice system does sometimes act against the interests of the capitalist class such as prosecutions for corporate crime
• Left realists argue that Marxism ignores intra-class crimes which cause great harm to victims

Neo-Marxists are influenced by Marxist ideas but they combine their ideas with other approaches. 'The New Criminology' agrees with Marxists that capitalist society is based on exploitation and class conflict and the state makes and enforces laws in the interests of the capitalist class so a classless society would be best. However, much of it is also a critique of existing theories and they describe their approach as critical criminology

Anti-determinism

Taylor et al argues that Marxism is deterministic as it sees workers as driven to commit crime out of necessity. Instead they reject this and take a voluntaristic view where we have free will so crime is a meaningful and conscious choice for the person. Criminals are not passive puppets whose behaviour is shaped by capitalism but they are deliberately striving to change society

A fully social theory of deviance

They aim to create a fully social theory of deviance that would help to change society for the better. This would have two main sources; Marxist ideas about the unequal distribution of wealth and ideas from Interactionism and labelling theory about the meaning of the deviant act for the actor and the effects of societal reaction. A complete theory of deviance needs to unite six aspects:

• The wider origins of the deviant act - unequal distribution of wealth
• The immediate origins of the deviant act - the context in which they commit it
• The act itself - its meaning for the actor
• The immediate origins of social reaction - such as police, family 
• The wider origins of social reaction - who has the power to define actions as deviant and to label others
• The effects of labelling - on the deviant's future actions

Criticisms of Neo-Marxism

• Feminists argue that it is gender blind as it focuses on male criminality
• Left realists argue that it romanticises working class criminals who are fighting against capitalism but really most crime is intra-class
• They ignore the effects of crime on working class victims
• Burke argues it is too general to explain crime and too idealistic to be useful in tackling crime

White collar and corporate crime

Sutherland defined white collar crime as a crime committed by a person of respectability in the course of his occupation but this failed to distinguish between occupational crime and corporate crime. To overcome this problem Pearce & Tombs define corporate crime as any illegal act that is the result of deliberate decisions by a legitimate business intended to benefit the business

The scale and types of corporate crime

Corporate crimes do far more harm than ordinary crime with the cost in the US being over 10x that of ordinary crimes. They also have enormous physical (deaths, injuries), environmental (pollution) and economic (to consumers, workers) costs

Corporate crime covers a wide range of acts including:

Financial crimes - such as tax evasion, money laundering with victims including companies, taxpayers and governments

Crimes against consumers - such as selling unfit goods like the 2013 horsemeat scandal where food products labelled as containing beef actually contained horse

Crimes against employees - such as sexual discrimination, violations of health and safety laws with a calculated rate of 1,100 work related deaths a year involving employers breaking the law

Crimes against the environment - such as toxic waste dumping such as Volkswagon installing car softwares which could disguise emissions levels

State-corporate crime - the harms committed when governments and businesses cooperate to pursue their goals

The abuse of trust

High status professionals occupy positions of trust and respectability. We entrust them with our finances, health, security etc and yet their position and status can give them the opportunity to abuse this trust. In the US Dr Schneider abused children whilst they were undergoing dental treatment and the accountancy firm KPMG paid a $400 million fine for its role in tax fraud

Perhaps the most notorious case of abuse of trust is that of GP Harold Shipman who murdered over 200 of his patients. In 1976 he had been convicted of obtaining enough morphine to kill 300 people by deception yet he only received a warning. Crimes of this kind violates the trust that society places in professionals making white collar crime a greater threat because it promotes distrust of social institutions

The invisibility of corporate crime

When compared with street crime the crimes of the powerful are relatively invisible and even when they are visible they are often not seen as real crimes because:

• The media give limited coverage to corporate crime thus reinforcing the stereotype that crime is a working class phenomenon. Corporate crime tends to be watered down such as describing deaths at work as accidents
• Lack of political will to tackle corporate crime as politicians often focus on street crime such as Theresa May on gangs in the London Riots
• The crimes are often complex and law enforcers are understaffed and resourced
• De-labelling so corporate crimes are often defined as civil not criminal and even when they are criminalised they receive fines rather than prison sentences
• Under-reporting because the victim is unaware that they have been victimised or they may feel powerless against a big organisation so don't report it

Partial visibility?

Since the 2008 financial crisis the activities of a range of different people may have made corporate crime more visible. These include campaigns against corporate tax avoidance such as UK Uncut, whistleblowers inside companies etc. Neoliberal policies such as marketisation means corporations are exposed to public scrutiny

Explanations of corporate crime

Strain theory - Box argues that if a company cannot achieve its goal of maximising profit by legal means, it may employ illegal ones instead. When business conditions become more difficult and profitability is squeezed companies may be tempted to break the law. For example law violations by large companies increased as their financial performance deteriorated

Differential association - Sutherland sees crime as behaviour learned from others. The less we associate with people who hold attitudes favourable to the law and the more we associate with people with criminal attitudes the more likely we are to become deviant. If a company's culture justifies committing crimes then employees will be socialised into this criminality. This links in with deviant subcultures and techniques of neutralisation where people produce moral justifications for deviating

Labelling theory - Unlike the poor, businesses have the power to avoid labelling through lawyers and accountants. The reluctance of law enforcement agencies to investigate reduces the number of offences officially recorded so official statistics under-estimate the extent of these offences

Marxism - Capitalism has successfully created a mystification where it has spread the ideology that corporate crime is less widespread. Capitalism's control of the state means it is able to avoid enforcing laws that conflict with its interests. Companies comply with the law only if it is enforced strictly so in developing countries capitalism shows its true face by paying low wages, selling unfit products

Criticisms

• Strain theory and Marxism over-predict the amount of business crime; it is unrealistic to assume that all businesses would offend were it not for the risk of punishment
• The idea that capitalism's persuit for profit causes crime doesn't explain crime in non profit making state agencies such as police, army etc
• Law abiding may be more profitable than law breaking such as US pharmeceutical companies that complied with the Federal Drug Administration were able to access lucrative markets in poorer countries