Sociology - White Collar Crime

- aimed to challenge stereotype that crime is purely lower-class

- defines 'white-collar crime' as "a crime committed by a person of respectability or high social status in the course of his occupation"

- doesn't differentiate between corporate crime (committed by employee for corporation) and occupational crime (committed by employee for personal gain, sometimes against corporation)

- doesn't account for 'harms' which do not actually break the law

- define corporate crime: "any illegal act or omission that is the result of deliberate decisions or culpable negligence by a legitimate business organisation and that is intended to benefit the business"

- includes breaches of civil and administrative law as well as criminal law, widen the definition

- corporate crime does more harm than street crime: enormous costs that are physical (deaths, injuries, illnesses), environmental (pollution), and economic (involving consumers, workers, taxpayers and governments)

- corporate crime is 'widespread, routine and pervasive'

• Financial Crimes 
• Crimes against Consumers 
• Crimes against Employees 
• Crimes against the Environment 
• State-Corporate Crime

- includes tax-evasion, bribery, money laundering and illegal accounting

- includes false labelling and selling unfit goods 

- In 2011, the French government suggested that women with breast implants from Poly Implant Prothèse have them removed due to use of industrial silicone rather than medical silicone

- includes sexual and racial discrimination, violation of wage laws, violation of rights to join a trade union and violation of health and safety regulations

- Tombs (2013) - there are up to 1,100 work-related deaths a year that involve employers breaking the law; this is more than the annual homicide rate

- includes illegal pollution 

- In 2015, Volkswagen admitted to installing software into 11 million vehicles that could disguise emission levels when vehicles were being tested to make them look more environmentally-friendly when really emissions were 40 times the US legal limit

- Kramer and Michaelowski (2006) refer to this as harms committed when the government and businesses work together.

- Private companies and government now work together in many areas: privatised public services such as education, armaments contracts, the 'war on terror'

- Private companies contracted to the US military have been accused of involvement with torture of detainees during occupation of Iraq

Carrabine et al (2014) - we entrust high-status professionals with our finances, health, security and personal information, and their status could give them the opportunity to abuse this trust

An example of this: 

- accountants Ernst and Young set up a tax avoidance scheme for wealthy clients; found in a UK tribunal to be 'unacceptable' and 'one of the most blatantly abusive scams of recent years'

- Sikka (2008) - this scheme could have cost the taxpayer £300 million a year

• The Media - limited converage; sanitised language which takes away from the fact it's real crime: fraud become 'mis-selling', embezzlement becomes 'accounting irregularities'
• Political Will - politicians focus on street crime: Home Office does not use crime surveys for corporate crime
• Complex - law enforcement usually too under-staffed and under-funded to investigate it properly and effectively
• De-Labelling - corporate crime often not treated as criminal, penalties are often more lenient: in 2010, French authorities provided the British with a list of 3,600 UK citizens holding secret bank accounts with the Swiss subsidiary of HSBC as a means of evading tax, UK authorities secured only one persucution and there was no action taken against HSBC, showing how corporate crime is often not dealth with
• Under-Reporting - often not reported as victim may not be aware they have been victimised, or victim may not be one specific person but a whole society or the environment, and therefore it can't be reported

- since financial crisis of 2008, campaigns such as Occupy or Uncut, investigative journalists and whistle-blowers are doing more to expose corporate crime

- based on Merton's Strain Theory, in which members of the working class would use illegitimate means to achieve mainstream goals

Box (1983)

- applies this to corporate crime

- argues that if a company can't maximise profits through legal means, it will employ illegal means instead

- companies tempted to break law when conditions become difficult

Clinard and Yeager (1980) - documentary study of corporate crime, found that law violations by large companies increased as financial performance deteriorated - suggests willingness to 'innovate' towards profit goals

- Sutherland (1949) sees crime as a behaviour learned from others in a social context, through attitudes

- This can be apllied to corporate crime: if a company justifies criminal behaviour, employees will be socialised into criminality

Geis (1967) - individuals joining companies where illegal price-fixing was prevalent were more likely to become invoved in it

Can link to two other concepts:

• Deviant Subcultures
• Techniques of Neutralisation: Sykes and Matza (1957) - individuals can deviate more easily if they can justify it, for example: white-collar criminals might just say they were carrying out orders, may blame the victim, or they may normalise their behaviour ('everyone's doing it')

Nelken (2012) - 'de-labelling'

- This refers to the way that businesses or professionals can avoid labelling, for example: they can afford lawyers to defend them

- Reluctance of law-enforcement to investigate corporate crime may also contribute to it's de-labelling

- Official statistics will under-represent true extent of corporate crime

- see corporate crime as a result of capitalism - capitalism's goal is to maximise profits which inevitably aligns with corporate crime

Box (1983) - capitalism has created a 'mystification'; it has spread an ideology that corporate crime is not as widespread as working-class crime

- capitalism controls the state, therefore it is able to avoid making or enforcing laws that oppose its interest and therefore can make corporate crime appear to be less of a problem; they only every prosecute the 'tip of the iceberg'

Pearce (1976) - this selective enforcement sustains the illusion that corporate crime is not common

- Can be combined with Strain Theory: Box (1983) - sees corporations as criminogenic as it is in their nature to resort to illegitimate means as soon as legitimate ones are blocked in order to maximise profits

Nelken (2012) - it is unrealistic to assume all businesses would offend were it not for the risk of being punished, for example: companies may have to avoid committing crime in order to maintain the good-will of other companies they may work with

Idea of capitalist pursuit of profit doesn't explain crime in non-profit agencies: the police, the army, the civil service

Some argue that law-abiding might be more profitable than law-breaking: Braithwaite (1984) - found that US pharmaceutical companies that complied with the Federal Drug Administration regulations could access lucrative markets in poorer countries that rely on FDA's guarantee of quality