Week 5: Crime by and against business

Corporate crime, white-collar crime, crime by business is a crime of power: a type of offence that takes place against the backdrop of unequal power relations, which affect both the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime and the likelihood of gaining recognition as a victim.

Corporate crime takes many different forms. When Ken Lay of Enron, or Robert Maxwell of the Mirror group, destroyed their own businesses from within for their own benefit, that was corporate crime. When banks sold people mortgage policies that were never going to pay out adequately, or insurance policies that they were never going to be able to claim on, that was corporate crime. When a Dutch company sold Romanian horsemeat to British supermarkets and food processors under the guise of beef, that was corporate crime. All these very different examples reflect a difference of power. Businesses large and small have much more power over us than we do over them, and in some cases the power they have is exercised in unlawful ways: overcharging us, selling us sub-standard products, ordering us to work excessive hours.

Even when it takes directly life-threatening forms, corporate crime has a tendency to remain invisible - "man crushed by machinery at workplace" may be an item on the local news but it won't make the national press. Not only that, but it won't get into the crime statistics. Nobody knows how much law-breaking goes on in business. One reason for this is that business regulation - the main approach used to control commercial rule-breaking - has a strong orientation towards gaining compliance rather than prosecuting wrong-doers. Where prosecution is used, it is used as a last resort: inspectors will try to get managers to co-operate, then use the threat of prosecution to try and induce compliance. Actually taking a company to court is an implicit admission that other methods have failed, and is almost a punishment in itself.

There are good reasons for using this 'responsive', compliance-oriented approach: being treated with respect encourages managers and employees to commit themselves to the rules being enforced, rather than just treating them as a box-ticking exercise. The more punitive approach of prosecuting everything that can be prosecuted may lead to staff getting stressed and demotivated, and only caring about sticking to the rules because they're afraid they'll lose their jobs.

But even if it does produce better results, with less disruption, than a more punitive approach, there's a question-mark over the responsive approach when it comes to the victims of corporate crime. Should corporate criminals always be prosecuted for the sake of doing justice to the victims? Alternatively, is it better to implement regulation that leads to better practices being adopted, so that there are fewer victims in future?