Crimes of the Powerful

White-Collar Crime and Beyond

Dawn Rothe, David Kauzlarich

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000562729
• Édition: 2
• Sujet: Sciences sociales
• Sous-sujet: Criminologie

As politicians and the media perpetuate the stereotype of the "common criminal, " crimes committed by the powerful remain for the most part invisible or are reframed as a "bad decision" or a "rare mistake." This is a topic that remains marginalized within the field of criminology and criminal justice, yet crimes of the powerful cause more harm, perpetuate more inequalities, and result in more victimization than street crimes. Crimes of the Powerful: White-Collar Crime and Beyond is the first textbook to bring together and show the symbiotic relationships between the related fields of state crime, white- collar crime, corporate crime, financial crime and organized crime, and environmental crime. Dawn L. Rothe and David Kauzlarich introduce the many types of crimes, their theoretical relevance, and issues surrounding regulations and social controls for crimes of the powerful. Themes covered include: • media, culture, and the Hollywoodization of crimes of the powerful;
• theoretical understanding and the study of the crimes of the powerful;
• typology of crimes of the powerful with examples and case studies;
• victims of the crimes of the powerful;
• the regulation and resistance of elite crime. Fully updated and revised, the new edition includes new chapters on occupational crime, crimes against the environment, and further coverage of representations of resistance to crimes of the powerful in popular culture. An ideal introductory text for both undergraduate and postgraduate students taking modules on the crimes of the powerful, white- collar crime, state crime, and green criminology, this text includes chapter summaries, activities and discussion questions, and lists of additional resources including films, websites, regulatory agencies, and additional readings.

Chapter 1Introduction to White-Collar Crime and Crimes of the Powerful

DOI: 10.4324/9781003124603-1

Any endeavor to expand criminological inquiry to crimes of the powerful should first begin by addressing what most students of criminology and criminal justice take for granted: the definition of crime. The concept of crime has had quite diverse meanings throughout the long history of its use, but, as we will discuss, the dominant and accepted understanding is the legalistic approach, which stipulates that crime is an act prohibited by the law. Yet, as Ray Michalowski (2013: 1) states,

criminology is a subject matter more than an academic discipline . . . [it] occupies the contradictory position of being a framework for intellectual inquiry into matters of crime and justice while simultaneously operating as an extension of the political state.

Using a legalistic perspective, it is the state, not criminologists, “that determines what behaviors are legal, which are illegal, and among those that are illegal, which will be nominated as serious crimes, which will be lesser offenses or minor infractions, and which will be treated as non-criminal administrative matters.” Orthodox criminology generally self-identifies as a scientific endeavor and is inherently biased in favor of definitions of crime that lend themselves easily to quantitative analysis. This bias inevitably privileges attention to conventional forms of crime—crimes committed by the powerless—that by their very nature lend themselves more readily to operationalization. In one sense then, criminologists’ focus on street crime reinforces individual, rational, and even moral explanations of criminality, and in so doing impedes any persistent critique of existing social arrangements. The dominant focus on state definitions of crime has resulted in an inverted criminology where the gravest social harms receive the least attention (Michalowski 2013). Indeed, as David Friedrichs suggests, there is “an inverse relationship between the level of harms caused by some human (individual or organizational) activity and the level of criminological concern” (Friedrichs 2009: 1). There is, however, a long-standing tradition of critique of conventional conceptions of crime that has been advanced by self-described radical or critical criminologists (see Canning and Tombs 2021; DeKeseredy 2021; DeKeseredy and Dragiewicz 2012; Hillyard and Tombs 2017; Pavlich 2019; Reiner 2016; Tifft and Sullivan 1980; Watts, Bessant, and Hill 2008).

These critical critiques of the definition of crime—like our approach, which is closely aligned with zemiology—promote attention to the crimes of the powerful rather than the crimes of the powerless. While recognizing some value to using state- and suprastate-produced definitions of crime, we propose a definition that extends to harms not recognized by the state (Canning and Tombs 2021; Friedrichs and Schwartz 2007; Hillyard, Pantazis, Tombs, and Gordon 2004; Rothe 2009). Zemiology is, essentially, the study of harms, including those caused by existing social structures that facilitate crimes of the powerful such as capitalism, materialism, and social inequality on numerous axes, from race, ethnicity, class, and gender differences to sexual identity, ability status, and nationality. As Boukli and Kotzé (2018: 4) note, zemiology is “both a response to mainstream administrative criminology and an attempt to reiterate key priories for social justice.” We argue that most people, especially those studying crime and criminal justice, are more concerned with reducing harm and victimization in society and increasing true justice than what legislators decide is against the law based on their largely hegemonic and pedestrian understanding of crime and victimization and what has been studied as truly harmful to living things.

What do we mean by terms such as white-collar crime and crimes of the powerful? Conceptualizations of power vary greatly within the social sciences and in sociology and criminology in particular. Definitions range from the capacity to direct or influence others or the course of events or resources; political or social authority or control over others; or authority that is given or delegated to someone or a group (i.e., governments or police). It is generally accepted that power is tied to authority and trust. While we do not wish to spend much time debating the meaning of power and the powerful, it is important to recognize that power exists only through social relationships and is historically and culturally specific as well as always present throughout time. It is not an easily identifiable object; rather it is produced and reproduced within social structures. Power subjugates, making one subject to another or a thing. Power is exercised, obtained, legitimated, and maintained through capital accumulation of varying types—economic, military, social, political, discursive, cultural, and intellectual. Perhaps the easiest way to determine power and the powerful, then, is to contest those relations by resisting legalistic definitions of crime, and in the process recognize and claim the harms of those with power as crimes. In this way, writing about the crimes of the powerful can be seen as a form of resistance (Stanley and McCulloch 2014). Vincenzo Ruggiero (2021) is helpful here: “the crimes of the powerful are the result of the different features displayed in the exercise of power itself: coercion, legitimacy, violence, secrecy, consensus, and hegemony.”

In addition to conceptualizations of power, as this chapter proceeds, we will address the problematics of terms like white-collar crime and why we argue that the concept of crimes of the powerful is the more accurate umbrella for the harms and crimes discussed throughout this volume (excluding Chapter 5). To better understand the distinctions between white-collar crime and crimes of the powerful, we should first explore what is often referred to as the Sutherland Legacy, followed by the Yale Division.

The Sutherland Legacy

In 1939, Edwin Sutherland gave a speech at the American Sociological Association conference that revolutionized criminology by taking a very different approach to defining and studying crime. While Sutherland’s original definition of white-collar crime was vague and left much room for interpretation, a decade later in 1949, he wrote the first book on the new concept, stating that

white collar crime may be defined approximately as a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation . . . the term white collar crime is used here to refer principally to business managers and executives.

(Kramer 1982; Sutherland 1949: 9)

Sutherland examined 70 corporations, including Westinghouse, General Electric, and General Motors, using a scientific study to examine how many times the corporations violated—and were charged for violating—regulatory laws. However, his case studies also included “crimes” committed by the farmer and the shoe salesman. This was the beginning of the debate about which types of crimes should be considered white-collar crimes as well as what should be considered a crime, the distinctions of which are seen through the studies that developed over the next 50 years and their impetus, the outcome of which, as we will see, is two divisions within white-collar crime: corporate crimes and what are often referred to as occupational crimes.

While Sutherland was not the first to discuss crimes of the white-collar class, previous efforts were not especially impactful. For example, during the late 1800s, when journalists dared to critique a class of “robber barons,” they were dismissed as “muckrakers.” Another example is Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which exposed working conditions in the meat packing industry. As corporations began emerging, a progressive movement was in full swing, and there were early attempts at reform to regulate them. Yet it was Sutherland who first began studying the phenomena through a scientific lens. While Sutherland was interested in all forms of crime, which explains the form of differential association theory, he was particularly adamant about avoiding class bias in criminological theory.

After Sutherland’s breakthrough, it may be surprising that little research and theorizing on white-collar crime took place immediately, although Marshall Clinard (1952) conducted a study on the black market during World War II, in which wartime rations were sold illegally at high profits. Donald Cressy (1953) wrote about embezzlers in federal prisons as white-collar offenders, and Geis (1968) kept Sutherland’s original concepts alive. This period is often referred to as the Big Chill in the United States as many social changes were occurring, such as the civil rights movement and Vietnam war protests.

During the 1970s, Watergate and other political scandals led to greater recognition of white-collar crime as real crime. During this decade, the United States Justice Department “discovered” forms of white-collar crime as a top investigative priority, defining the phenomenon as “those classes of non-violent illegal activities which principally involve traditional notions of deceit, deception, concealment, manipulation, breach of trust, subterfuge or illegal circumvention” (Poveda 1994: 134). The state’s transformation of white-collar crime into a legal concept resulted in the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ definition fundamentally altering Sutherland’s concept of white-collar crime by including the criminal acts of non-elite persons within their scope. The Justice Department also adopted an offense-based, rather than offender-based, definition. The defining criterion was not who committed the act (elite or non-elite), but the nature of the act itself. Notice the explicit mention of “nonviolent” crimes, which is a completely bankrupt element of the offense in the minds of those who study crimes of the powerful.

Nonetheless, scholars such as Herbert Edelhertz worked toward clarifying the term white-collar crime, though Edelhertz’s (1970) definition is more akin to the traditions of the Yale school of thought. Clinard and Richard Quinney bifurcated white-collar crime into occupational crime—“offenses committed by individuals for themselves in the course of their occupations and the offenses of employees against their employers”—and corporate crime—“offenses committed by the corporate officials for their corporation and the offenses of the corporation itself” (Kramer 1982). In 1977, Quinney’s book Class, State, and Crime was published, providing the early terrain of Marxist instrumentalist theories of crime and justice. American culture was changing and more radical ideas about race, class, gender, and other inequalities were entering popular culture. Further expansions of the definition of “crime” continued. Laura Shill Schrager and James F. Short Jr. (1978) examined organizational crime in a major turn for white-collar crime as it returned to Sutherland’s definition. Schrager and Short argued that the impact of illegal organizational behavior and the characteristics of crimes committed in organizational settings provide a framework for identifying a class of illegal actions as organizational crimes.

During the 1980s, putting aside Sutherland’s original concepts and definitions, corporate crime became a subset of possible white-collar crime offenses under organizational crimes, or “criminal acts engaged in by corporate organizations themselves as social and legal entities or by officials or employees of the corporation action, acting on behalf of or in concert with the corporate action” (Kramer 1982). In 1982, Ronald C. Kramer defined corporate crime as criminal acts (of omission or commission) that are the re...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Endorsements Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Figures and Tables
• Chapter 1 Introduction to White-Collar Crime and Crimes of the Powerful
• Chapter 2 Media, Culture, and Crimes of the Powerful
• Chapter 3 Theoretical Understandings of Crimes of the Powerful
• Chapter 4 The Symbiotic Nature of Crimes of the Powerful
• Chapter 5 Occupational Crime
• Chapter 6 Corporate Crime
• Chapter 7 State Crime
• Chapter 8 State-Corporate Crime
• Chapter 9 The Relationship between Organized Crime Networks and Crimes of the Powerful
• Chapter 10 Crimes of International Financial Institutions
• Chapter 11 Environmental Harms and Crimes
• Chapter 12 Victims of Crimes of the Powerful
• Chapter 13 Regulating Crimes of the Powerful
• Chapter 14 Resistance against Crimes of the Powerful
• Chapter 15 The Commodification and Pacification of Crimes of the Powerful through Everyday Life
• Chapter 16 Concluding Thoughts
• Index