corporate crime
- Also called:
- organizational crime
- Key People:
- Marshall B. Clinard
corporate crime, type of white-collar crime committed by individuals within their legitimate occupations, for the benefit of their employing organization. Such individuals generally do not think of themselves as criminals, nor do they consider their activities criminal. Related to corporate crime is professional white-collar crime, which is crime committed by those who identify with crime and make crime their sole livelihood.
The concept of corporate crime
The origins of the concept of corporate crime can be traced to the larger concept of white-collar crime, which was first introduced in the social sciences by American criminologist Edwin Sutherland in a 1939 presidential address to the American Sociological Association. He defined white-collar crime as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” Focusing on the powerful as well as the downcast, such a concept represented a radical reorientation in theoretical views of the nature of criminality. Sutherland later published a book titled White Collar Crime (1949), which concentrated almost exclusively on corporate crime. Using official records of regulatory agencies, courts, and commissions, he found that all 70 of the corporations that he examined over a 40-year period had violated at least one law or had an adverse decision issued against it for false advertising, patent abuse, wartime trade violations, price-fixing, fraud, or intended manufacturing and sale of faulty goods. Many were recidivists (repeaters) with an average of eight negative decisions issued for each. Sutherland noted that while “crime in the streets” captured the newspaper headlines, “crime in the suites” continued unnoticed. While white-collar crime was far more costly than street crime, most cases were not even covered under criminal law but were treated as civil or administrative violations.
Corporations and criminality
Most criminologists divide white-collar crime into two major types: corporate crime and occupational crime (crime committed during the course of a legitimate occupation, for one’s own benefit). Most corporate criminals do not view their activities as criminal, since their violations are usually part of their occupational environment. Corporate offenders remain committed to conventional society and do not identify with criminality. Their inappropriate behaviour is often informally approved by occupational or corporate subcultures.
Despite Sutherland’s pioneering study, little attention was focused on the white-collar variety until the first large-scale, comprehensive investigation of corporate crime, by American criminologists Marshall Clinard and Peter Yeager, titled Illegal Corporate Behavior, 1975–1976 (1979). The study involved a systematic investigation of administrative, civil, and criminal actions either filed or completed by 25 federal agencies against 477 of the largest wholesale, retail, and service organizations in the United States. Many of the same patterns that had been discovered by Sutherland some three decades earlier were found to persist. About 60 percent of the large corporations had at least one legal action initiated against them, while the most deviant firms—8 percent of the corporations—committed the majority of offenses (52 percent of all offenses). The oil, pharmaceutical, and automobile industries were responsible for almost half of all violations. The leniency with which corporate violators were treated persisted.
Corporate crime in the United States
In the United States, certain business activities have been considered illegal since the beginning of the 19th century. Deceptive advertising, restraint of trade, bank fraud, faulty manufacturing of dangerous products, phony securities sales, patent violations, and environmental pollution are examples. The first of many regulatory laws passed by the United States federal government was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. This act was intended to prevent price fixing and the formation of monopolies. The policing of corporate violations primarily takes place by federal and state regulatory agencies. Some examples of such agencies are the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Regulatory agencies have a number of sanctions that are used to enforce their laws. These include warnings, recalls, orders, injunctions, monetary penalties, and criminal penalties.
International scandals associated with American-based multinational corporations led the U.S. Congress to pass the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (1977), which prohibits the payment of bribes in order to obtain business contracts. In 1996 the United States and 26 other countries agreed to outlaw bribery. Such bribery of public officials had tainted international commerce, thereby compromising fair trade and leading to corruption of public office.
The challenge of combatting corporate crime
While corporations may complain about the burden of federal bureaucracies and their enforcement of regulations, guilty companies generally have more expertise, staff, and time to devote to their defense than the government has for prosecution. Regulatory agencies have been criticized as being ineffective in enforcing laws against powerful corporations. Often the penalties for law violation are too small to act as deterrents. Offenders are seldom convicted and rarely get jail time. Many are permitted to plead nolo contendere (no contest) to charges, which enables them to escape the stigma of being labeled “guilty” or “criminal.” The appointed directors of agencies are often drawn from the very corporations to be regulated; these same companies may then hire retiring agency employees. In addition, the amount of money governments assign to corporate crime generally is much smaller than that allocated for street crime.
