Crimes Of The Powerful

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.

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: An introduction 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, organized crime, and environmental crime. Dawn L. Rothe and David Kauzlarich introduce the many types of crimes, methodological issues associated with research, 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; a 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. 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, and additional readings.

Crimes of the powerful - the crimes committed by state institutions and private business organizations or corporations – are often overlooked by Criminology, or are treated at best as a mildly interesting diversion from the real business of crime and criminal justice. Indeed, academic Criminology in the main tends to reinforce the idea that the real problems of society can be located in the lower strata of society and is yet to come to terms with overwhelming evidence that crimes of the institutionally powerful kill, rip off and steal from more people than crimes committed by individuals. This exciting Reader introduces debates on crimes of the powerful with a selection of 45 extracts from key authors. Each section of the book is introduced with an original essay to contextualize the readings and explain their importance for rethinking the relationship between crime and power. The book is organised into the following sections: State, Violence and Crime Partners in Crime Capitalism and Crimes of the Powerful Law and the Corporation Explanations Definitions The Problem of Criminalization If we are to fully understand the crimes of the powerful, it is crucial to recognise that the process of criminalisation is profoundly influenced by state institutions and corporations – and more importantly, by the relationship between them. The readings in this book show how their ability to both make and break the law remains a key source of power for those institutions. Crimes of the Powerful explores how law and 'crime' provide a framework for configuring and reproducing social relations of power, in doing so, provides criminology, sociology, politics and international relations students with new insights into a subject of growing importance.

Across the world, most people are well aware of ordinary criminal harms to person and property. Often committed by the powerless and poor, these individualized crimes are catalogued in the statistics collected annually by the FBI and by similar agencies in other developed nations. In contrast, the more harmful and systemic forms of injury to person and property committed by powerful and wealthy individuals, groups, and national states are neither calculated by governmental agencies nor annually reported by the mass media. As a result, most citizens of the world are unaware of the routinized "crimes of the powerful", even though they are more likely to experience harms and injuries from these types of organized offenses than they are from the atomized offenses of the powerless. Research on the crimes of the powerful brings together several areas of criminological focus, involving organizational and institutional networks of powerful people that commit crimes against workers, marketplaces, taxpayers and political systems, as well as acts of torture, terrorism, and genocide. This international handbook offers a comprehensive, authoritative and structural synthesis of these interrelated topics of criminological concern. It also explains why the crimes of the powerful are so difficult to control. Edited by internationally acclaimed criminologist Gregg Barak, this book reflects the state of the art of scholarly research, covering all the key areas including corporate, global, environmental, and state crimes. The handbook is a perfect resource for students and researchers engaged with explaining and controlling the crimes of the powerful, domestically and internationally.

This book provides an analysis of the two concepts of power and crime and posits that criminologists can learn more about these concepts by incorporating ideas from disciplines outside of criminology. Although arguably a 'rendezvous' discipline, Vincenzo Ruggiero argues that criminology can gain much insight from other fields such as the political sciences, ethics, social theory, critical legal studies, economic theory, and classical literature. In this book Ruggiero offers an authoritative synthesis of a range of intellectual conceptions of crime and power, drawing on the works and theories of classical, as well as contemporary thinkers, in the above fields of knowledge, arguing that criminology can ‘humbly’ renounce claims to intellectual independence and adopt notions and perspectives from other disciplines. The theories presented locate the crimes of the powerful in different disciplinary contexts and make the book essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of criminology, sociology, law, politics and philosophy.

Frank Pearce was the first scholar to use the term 'crimes of the powerful.' His ground-breaking book of the same name provided insightful critiques of liberal orthodox criminology, particularly in relation to labelling theory and symbolic interactionism, while making important contributions to Marxist understandings of the complex relations between crime, law and the state in the reproduction of the capitalist social order. Historically, crimes of the powerful were largely neglected in crime and deviance studies, but there is now an important and growing body of work addressing this gap. This book brings together leading international scholars to discuss the legacy of Frank Pearce’s book and his work in this area, demonstrating the invaluable contributions a critical Marxist framework brings to studies of corporate and state crimes, nationally, internationally and on a global scale. This book is neither a hagiography, nor a review of random areas of social scientific interest. Instead, it draws together a collection of scholarly and original articles which draw upon and critically interrogate the continued significance of the approach pioneered in Crimes of the Powerful. The book traces the evolution of crimes of the powerful empirically and theoretically since 1976, shows how critical scholars have integrated new theoretical insights derived from post-structuralism, feminism and critical race studies and offers perspectives on how the crimes of the powerful - and the enormous, ongoing destruction they cause - can be addressed and resisted.

Despite the enormous economic, physical and social impacts of crimes committed by states and corporations, they are still relatively under-researched within contemporary social science--partly because of the perpetrator's ability to evade critical scrutiny. The contributions in this book map out the parameters of a political economy of researching the powerful, marking out the major problems encountered, and identifying ways in which these problems might be overcome or circumnavigated. To this end, the book brings together original essays which reflect upon researching the powerful in Britain, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Spain, Turkey and the United States. Together these chapters advance our understandings of what corporate and state power is, how this power operates, and how it might be more effectively resisted.