Neo-Marxist

• Taylor et al attempted to make a fully social theory of deviance
• The fully social theory of deviance combines Marxist, interactionist and labelling theory
• The steps of the fully social theory of deviance is;

  • Wider origins of an act
  • The Context
  • The act itself
  • Immediate action
  • Social reaction
  • Effects of labelling
• Sutherland coined the term 'white collar' crime to challenge the stereotype that crime is purely a lower class phenomenon
• Tombs say white collar crimes do more harm than street crimes, it is a widespread routine and pervasive problem
• Examples of corporate crimes are;

  • Financial crimes
  • Crimes again Consumers
  • Crimes against Employees
  • State-corporate Crime
  • Crimes against the Environment
• An example of a Financial Crime is Jordan Belfort, whose pump and dump scheme only caused a sentence of 22 months in prisoner
• An example of a crime against Consumers is the Nestle Baby Formula scandal, which killed approximately 10 million, the only punishment was a public boycott
• An example of a crime against Employees is the Amazon case were a 61 year old dies on shift, his body was surrounded by carboard boxes - there was no consequence
• An example of State-Corporate crime is the space shuttle challenger whose explosion killed 7 people and engineer warnings were ignored - top managers were demoted or forced to accept early retirement
• An example of a Crime against the Environment is the BP oil Spin, an explosion that cause oil to spill in the water - the punishment was 14 federal charges (including felony manslaughter) and £20 billion fund to compensate
• Carrabine et al says society entrusts professionals, which gives them the opportunity to abuse the trust
• Sunderland says white collar crime violates the trust that society places in professionals, this undermines the fabric of society
• Harold Shipman (Dr Death) is an example of a professional that voilated societies trust in him
• There is a range of reasons for Invisibility of Corporate Crime including;

  • The media
  • Lack of political will
  • Complexity of crimes
  • De-labelling
  • Under-reporting
• However, whistleblowers are able to make invisible corporate crime more visible
• Box says the reason for corporate crime are a way to maximise profits by innovating crime
• Geis says that joining companies which practised illegal price-fixing, would become involved as a result of their association