| CORPORATE CRIME (and the �Academic Siberia� of Corporate Criminology) Corporate crime refers to crimes committed by corporations through the actions of corporate officers in the pursuit of personal/corporate profit and power. Victims include both individuals (especially workers and consumers) and the public as a whole. Corporate crime is usually intimately connected to routine political corruption. Criminologists have pointed out for decades that corporate crime in the US kills and injures many more people each year than street crime and costs at least ten to twenty times more than street crime in economic losses to victims and the public. Background of corporate crime Corporate crime begins with market competition, first with merchants trading goods in agricultural societies and later with the whole range of corporate actors in industrializing and industrial societies. Market competition is theoretically based on ideals of freedom and fair competition, ideals which are generally encoded in law. But coercion, fraud, monopoly, and other forms of criminal �cheating� enhance the ability of corporate actors to �win� in the market competition, and thus are always a temptation for corporate officers whose careers typically depend on the success of the corporation. Corporate Crime in the US After the Civil War ended in1865, the US began a period of rapid industrialization based on market competition (capitalism) and by 1900 the US was the leading industrial producer in the world. From the start, this process was accompanied by the equally rapid development of political corruption and corporate crime on a massive scale. The Robber Baron Era (1860s to 1920s) During the early period of US industrialization, the �Robber Barons� made huge fortunes (mostly connected to the steel industry and the building/operation of the railroads) by forcing workers into �sweatshop" labor (low wages, horrible working conditions) and by wholesale bribing or outright buying of politicians who then financed the favored businesses with public money. Scandals led to reform movements but they were mostly ineffective, and the 1920s was a �golden age� of corruption and corporate crime in the US. The Robber Baron era ended with economic collapse and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Modern Era (1940s to today) During WW2, massive government spending on the war provided opportunities for �war profiteering� (businesses used their political connections to overcharge government for war products) as well as the usual forms of corporate crime/corruption. During the post-war period, the economic boom fueled by �socialist� reforms plus increasing government regulation of corporations suppressed growth of corporate crime but also led to growing corporate pressure in the 1960s and 1970s against government regulation. This pressure ultimately resulted in the �conservative turn� in American politics and ushered in a �decade of greed� in the 1980s - �deregulation� and the return of corporate crime, corruption, and scandals on a huge scale. The 1990s saw a reemergence of some government regulation of corporations but this has been reversed again since 2000 and deregulation has already led to the current round of corporate crime and corruption scandals � Enron, Worldcom, etc. Some criminologists have suggested that corporate crime increases following economic booms when both the competition between corporations (for �market shares�) and the new wealth available for appropriation leads to a �feeding frenzy� as corporate officers cut corners, cheat, and then use �creative accounting� to cover up their crime and the political corruption that supports it. Corporate Criminology as "Academic Siberia" Corporate criminology in the US originated not with criminologists but with journalists (called �muckrakers�) around the turn of the last century who wrote popular and often shocking accounts of corporate behavior at the time, including horrible conditions in the meat industry, bribery of public officials, monopolies, and others. It was not until the 1930s that criminologist Edwin Sutherland brought the topic (which he called �white collar crime�) into the lexicon of academic criminology by documenting numerous criminal offenses by major corporations. Despite recurring corporate crime scandals throughout the following decades, most criminologists paid little attention to the issue until a brief revival of interest occurred during the political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. By then, mainstream criminologists had watered down Sutherland�s emphasis on corporate crime by folding employee crimes against corporations into a broader concept of white collar crime. This has created a great deal of confusion because it makes WC Crime �hard to define� and also confuses the public/media by individualizing corporate crime and blaming most corporate crime on lower level executives (scapegoats). In the 1970s the Federal Government, through the Justice Department (FBI, etc.) began allocating huge amounts of public money (along with corporate and foundation grant money) to education and research on crime and the "criminal justice system" - a new umbrella term purportedly meant to encompass the whole range of criminal law and law enforcement. Virtually the entire focus of this new effort from the start has been on "street crime" and education and research on corporate crime has been further marginalized by the lack of comparable interest or education/research funding - thus the charge by critics that corporate criminology and criminologists have been consigned to "academic Siberia." Today the current scandals involving Enron and other corporate predators, combined with the collapse of the stock market, have led to a resurgence of interest in corporate crime and corporate predators. Meanwhile, though, large corporations, which own all of the major media outlets, contribute millions of dollars to both political parties, and make billions of dollars from contracts related to the CJS (the CJS is a $50 billion a year industry rife with corruption), continue to shape the public perspective that street crime is the more important problem, despite evidence that corporate crime today still kills and injures many more people and costs the public much more financially than street crime. Some Common types of corporate crime: Crimes against consumers Telemarketing scams False advertising (e.g., bait and switch) Price fixing by "competitors" Unsafe products Environmental crime Pollution and toxic dumping (e.g., the "superfund" cleanup fraud) Export of dumping to poorer countries (e.g., DDT and Mexico) Workplace environment (e.g., asbestos, cotton dust, radioactive material) Corruption of institutions Media and Censorship (all major US media are now owned by large corporations) Economy (Enron, etc.) Religion (e.g., televangelist scams) Charity (e.g., United Way, Red Cross) Financial fraud Banks Insurance companies Pension funds Crimes by government Human experiments (LSD, radiation poisoning, ect.) Bribery of foreign officials Abuse of power - (Watergate, Iran-Contra, CIA and the drug trade, war crimes) Corruption of public officials Rampant greed and corruption at every level of government Medical crime Ripoffs of Medicare & Insurance fraud Hospitals, medical equipment, homecare/managed care scams Quack drugs and medical devices Computer crime The Microsoft monopoly Software piracy Industrial espionage |