This chapter examines the emergence of the concept of corporate crime, discussing its meaning and reviewing the extent to which it represents a crime problem. It then considers various dimensions of corporate crime—its visibility, causation, and control—questioning society's will to censure and punish company directors and other ‘rogue’ capitalists.
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Course-focused and comprehensive, the Textbook on series provides an accessible overview of the key areas on the law curriculum. This chapter discusses the concepts of right realism and left realism, both of which approaches accept that there is a real crime problem and recognise the need to monitor the success of interventions to guarantee their cost-effectiveness. However, those on the right argue that criminology needs to stop trying to explain crime and start controlling behaviour, and urge the State to get tough on crime. Those on the left have been disillusioned with radical and critical criminologies, and search for simple solutions to real problems for real people who are not able to protect themselves.
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Michael Levi and Nicholas Lord
This chapter presents a succinct overview of key debates and ideas associated with theory, research, and practice in the area of white-collar and corporate crimes. First, it considers white-collar and corporate crimes in the twenty-first century, contextualizing these phenomena and reinforcing their criminological significance. Second, it revisits on-going conceptual debates, identifying central analytical features of white-collar and corporate crimes before going on to argue in favour of shifting attention towards understanding how white-collar crimes are organized and the conditions that shape this over time. Third, it reviews ways of explaining these behaviours, ranging from consideration of individual propensities and rationality through organizational context and culture to wider social conditions. Fourth, it examines current policing and regulation strategies, concluding with a discussion of key themes in white-collar crime research and scholarship.
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1. Theoretical Contexts:
The Changing Nature and Scope of the Sociology of Crime and Deviance
This book explores the sociology of crime and deviance as an incoherent discipline with relatively independent versions. It considers the diverse theories and perspectives on crime and deviance that can be linked, either directly or indirectly, to the work of Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber. It also looks at each of the major schools of thought and their assumptions, along with the character and sources of ambiguity that has characterized the sociology of crime and deviance. As an example, the book cites the disagreements regarding the connection between crime and politics. In particular, it discusses the debate over the consequences of the politicization of crime control. Finally, it examines the disparate contexts in which criminology is viewed as an academic enterprise.
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This chapter discusses the significance of control in the operation of society, which has been recognised by philosophers and writers for many centuries. Control is an aspect of most theories of crime and deviance, but it has not, until comparatively recently, been studied in its own right as a significant causal feature of crime and deviance. One possible reason for this is that criminologists were reluctant to research into ideas that so clearly support discipline and regulation, particularly in the liberal climate of the early 1960s. Also, the pathological undertones of the theory were unappealing to the sociologists, who had largely come to replace the psychologists at the forefront of criminological writing. Furthermore, perhaps the importance of control was thought to accord with general common sense and criminologists, in attempting to provide a mystique in order to have their discipline taken more seriously, preferred to concentrate on less obvious phenomena.
Chapter
Ian Loader and Richard Sparks
Questions of crime and security today often seem dominated by a contest between populism on the one hand and epistemic crime control on the other. These positions appear to press conflicting claims: the former seeks to speak for ‘the people’, or ‘victims’, or ‘law-abiding citizens’ who have been ill-served by remote penal elites; the latter (e.g., the evidence-based policy movement) claims that emotive irrationalism in crime policy should be countered by institutions that enhance the power and influence of experts/knowers. Our aim in this chapter is to reconstruct the visions of crime governance to be found in populist and epistemic ideologies and to clarify what is at stake in disputes between them. In so doing, we question the assumption that they are competing alternatives. We argue, instead, that populism and technocracy are twin pathologies of our contemporary anti-political malaise, both of which ‘disfigure’ the ideal and practice of democracy by neglecting the normative force of democratic procedures.
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13. Global criminology 1
Comparative criminology
Sacha Darke
This chapter presents an overview of global criminology, introducing the overarching theme and concept of globalisation and drawing comparisons between crime and justice in different countries. Today, criminologists who research other parts of the world increasingly turn to international definitions of crime, and international understanding of the causes of crime and the effectiveness and legitimacy of the various forms of crime control. In doing so, criminologists in the Global North are becoming more aware that they need to diversify the discipline further to include the knowledge and viewpoints of researchers from the Global South. The emerging area of global criminology is divided into two broad areas of research interest. The first, comparative criminology, focuses on identifying and understanding convergences and divergences in crime and justice between nations and regions. The second area, transnational criminology, explores the nature of organised, state, and corporate crimes and responses to organised crimes that cross borders.
Book
Katherine S. Williams
Course-focused and comprehensive, the Textbook on series provides an accessible overview of the key areas on the law curriculum. Textbook on Criminology offers an engaging and wide-ranging account of crime and criminology, addressing the theoretical, practical, and political aspects of the subject. The clarity of approach makes it an ideal text for students wishing to gain a firm grasp of the fundamental issues, together with an appreciation of some of the complexities surrounding the study of criminology. The author deals with the major questions of criminology, such as: How do you define a crime? Why do people become criminals? How should we deal with criminals? Each question is studied from an objective and academic viewpoint and encourages greater social, political, and philosophical awareness of crime, criminals, and society's response to them. The text also maps out the changes in crime control and society's expectations in relation to it. For example, students will find the insightful chapter on terrorism and state violence to be of particular interest and relevance; established criminological theories are applied, and the author addresses issues such as political responses to terrorism and the reasons why people become terrorists. The text is ideal both for students studying towards a degree in criminology, and students opting to study criminology as part of another subject, such as law.
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This chapter reflects on the crime control approach. Criminologists and criminal justice practitioners who adopt this standpoint accept that crime is inevitable; but they are also committed to minimising its effects, either by restricting opportunities to offend or by acting decisively where crimes are committed. Crime control and retributive interventions may well coincide, despite their differing motivations, for example in the case of imprisonment. But crime control also extends well beyond deterrent sanctions to include other measures geared towards the assessment and management of potential risks, target hardening, proactive policing, offender surveillance, and restrictions. The chapter then looks at the role of the police in crime control including zero tolerance, intelligence-led policing, and community policing as well as the role of other agencies, such as architects, the community, private security providers, and the judiciary. It considers how predictive tools might be used to minimise the risk of reoffending and assesses some of the impacts and outcomes of crime control strategies.
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This chapter explores control theories of the sociology of deviance, crime, and delinquency. It first considers two types of control theories: social control theories, which originate from the work of Émile Durkheim and the concept of social bond, and situational control theories, which stem from Jeremy Bentham’s conception of offending and focus on variations in opportunities to commit crime and on the defensibility of targets. After discussing the place of control theories in sociological theorizing on deviance and control, the chapter examines its role in criminology, citing the work of scholars such as Travis Hirschi, David Matza, and Ron Clarke. It also describes the ‘routine activity theory’ of L. Cohen and M. Felson before concluding with a review of criticisms against control theories
Chapter
Course-focused and comprehensive, the Textbook on series provides an accessible overview of the key areas on the law curriculum. This chapter examines the way in which society might persuade individuals to be law abiding. It looks at the social structures that may help law-abiding behaviour: by implication if they are absent, criminality might well arise. The discussions cover early control theories; individual control; sociological control theories; control balance; facilitating and choosing criminality; community-based origins of conformity; official or institutional control agents; and evaluation of control theories.
Book
David Downes, Paul Rock, and Eugene McLaughlin
Understanding Deviance provides a comprehensive guide to the current state of criminological theory. It outlines the principal theories of crime, deviance, and rule-breaking, discussing them chronologically, and placing them in their European and North American contexts considering major criticisms that have been voiced against them, and constructing defences where appropriate. The volume has been revised and brought up-to-date to include new issues of crime, deviance, disorder, criminal justice, and social control in the early twenty-first century. It considers new trends in criminological theory such as cultural criminology and public criminology, further discussion of how post-modernism and the ‘risk society’ is reformulating crime and deviance, and an assessment of how different approaches address the fall in crime rates across most democratic and developed societies. There is also a new chapter on victimology.
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4. Functionalism:
The Durkheimian Legacy
This chapter explores the functionalist approach to crime, deviance, and control as well as the criticisms heaped against it. It first considers the central tenets of functionalism, its strengths and weaknesses, and how it has contributed to the sociological perspective on crime and deviance before turning to the views of Émile Durkheim and George Herbert Mead about the functions of crime, deviance, and control. It then discusses developments in American sociology and the legacy of the proponents of functionalism. It also examines the adoption of functionalist approaches for the analysis of crime in American society by scholars such as Kingsley Davis, Robert Merton, and Talcott Parsons.
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This chapter examines the phenomenological sociology of crime, deviance, and control. It first discusses the central issues relating to phenomenology, particularly with respect to knowledge, good and evil, and deviant phenomena. It then discusses some of the arguments put forward by phenomenologists, citing the link between experiences and consciousness and how phenomenology relates to social order. It also considers the work of Aaron Cicourel, Egon Bittner, David Sudnow, and others on the phenomenological sociology of crime and deviance, as well as the emergence of phenomenological criminology. The chapter concludes by reviewing some of the criticisms of phenomenological work on deviance.
Chapter
Benjamin Bowling, Robert Reiner, and James Sheptycki
The concluding chapter pulls together the implications of the earlier chapters of this book for an assessment of where policing is heading, and what is to be done to achieve greater effectiveness, fairness, and justice. It seeks to answer eight specific questions: What is policing? Who does it? What do police do? What are police powers? What social functions do they achieve? How does policing impact on different groups? By whom are the police themselves policed? How can policing practices be understood? It considers technological, cultural, social, political, economic changes and their implications for crime, order, and policing. It also examines the multifaceted reorientation of police thinking, especially shifts in the theory and practice of policing in the 1990s that included the rhetoric of consumerism. The chapter considers the limits of police reform and the implications of neo-liberalism for the police before concluding with a call for policing based on the principles of social democracy.
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Benjamin Bowling, Robert Reiner, and James Sheptycki
The chapter outlines seven ideal-typical models for thinking about the politics of police. The models are not mutually exclusive and can be combined to form complex descriptions of theoretical relations. They rest on a variety of conceptual distinctions. Crime control and due process; high and low policing; police force and police service; organizational structure and officer discretion; state, market, and civil society; police knowledge work, investigation and intelligence; and the democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian politics of policing are all discussed. The police métier is discussed a set of habits and assumptions that envisions only the need to control, deter, and punish. It has evolved around the practices of tracking, surveillance, keeping watch and unending vigilance, and the application of force, up to and including fatal force. The chapter concludes that these seven models for thinking about police and policing facilitate micro-, meso-, and macro-level analysis.
Chapter
Benjamin Bowling, Robert Reiner, and James Sheptycki
This chapter explores some of the political myths about police and policing by reviewing the research evidence on police practice. It considers the police role in theory and practice by focusing on three questions: what is the police role? what do the police actually do? and how well do they do it? It explores the original historical purpose of the police, the governmental authority on which it is based, the role of public opinion, why people call the police, the role and effectiveness of the police in crime control, and in broader social functions. The chapter concludes that the core function of the police is best analysed not in terms of any of their social functions but rather the special character of the means the police can bring to bear. Underlying the diversity of situations to which the police are called is the core capacity to use legitimate coercive force.
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Iris Chiu and Joanna Wilson
This concluding chapter studies the regulation compelling banks and financial institutions to play an active part in combatting financial crime. Regulation takes two approaches: one is to enforce anti-money laundering law through banks and financial situations; and the other approach is to enforce anti-money laundering law against them if they should be found to be complicit in transferring proceeds of crime. Under the first approach, regulation imposes duties on banks and financial institutions to act as gatekeepers to prevent money laundering from taking place and to identify such incidents so as to help regulators carry out enforcement. Under the second approach, banks and financial institutions may be punished for sometimes inadvertently becoming complicit in money laundering, and this provides a strong incentive for them to treat their gatekeeper roles seriously. The chapter then considers the regulatory duty of due diligence, financial intelligence reporting, and internal control and governance.
Chapter
Per-Olof H. Wikström
This chapter analyses and explains acts of crimes as moral actions (i.e., actions guided by what is the right or wrong thing to do) within an analytical criminology framework. It outlines some common problems of current mainstream criminological theorizing and research, such as the lack of a shared definition of crime, the poor integration of knowledge about the role of people and places in crime causation, the frequent confusion of causes and correlates, and the lack of an adequate action theory, and proposes a more analytical criminology as the remedy. The chapter introduces Situational Action Theory (SAT), a general, dynamic, and mechanism-based theory about crime and its causes, designed to address these problems and provide a foundation for an analytical criminology. It concludes by briefly discussing main implications for the future direction of policy and prevention.
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13. Public Criminology:
Theory and Policy
This chapter examines the implications of theories of crime and deviance for public policy and practice. It first considers why criminologists devote few of their resources to political activity in general and the making of public policy in particular, with emphasis on the issues of role-definition, translatability, and salience. It then turns to some theoretical perspectives about the relationship between deviance and social policy, focusing on the work of the Chicago School of Sociology as well as functionalist theories, anomie theory, and the projects that put forward a theory based on a detailed analysis of the links between crime, delinquency, and social structure. It also looks at the work of Thomas Mathiesen in the field of a critical criminological penal reform project that advocates abolitionism. The chapter concludes with a discussion of public criminology.
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