Crimes of the Powerful

White Collar & Corporate Crime:

White collar crime = a crime committed by a person of respectability & high social status in the course of his occupation

Occupational crime = committed by employees simply for their own personal gain, often against the organisation for which they work, e.g. stealing from company

Corporate crime = committed by employees for their organisation in pursuit of its goals, e.g. deliberately mis-selling products to increase company profits

The Scale & Types of Corporate Crime:

Financial Crime - such as tax evasion, bribery, money, laundering & illegal accounting. Victims include other companies, shareholders, taxpayers & governments

Crimes against consumers - such as false labelling & unselling unfit goods

Crimes against employees - such as sexual & racial dscrimination, violations of wage laws, of right to join a union or take indistrial action & health & safety laws

Crimes agaisnt the environment - includeillegal pollution of air, water & land such as toxic waste dumping

State-corporte crime - refers to harms committed when government institutions & businesses cooperate to pursue their goals

The Abuse of Trust:

• High-status professionals occupy positions of trust& respectability
• Carrabine et al (2014) we entrust them with our finances, our helath, our security & our personal information, however their position…