Environmental Engineering Reference
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of legitimate occupational activity, by persons of high or respectable status for per-
sonal or organizational gain'' (Helmkamp, Ball and Towsend 1996: 351). Sutherland
(1940; 1983), and all scholars after him studying this phenomenon, found that one
of the intrinsic characteristics of white collar crime is that it entitles behaviour that
is not primarily dealt with by criminal courts (he found it only in 17% of the cases
of law breaking), but more often by administrative and civil law and regulations. It
constitutes 'socially injurious acts' (in fact more harmful than petty crime or crimes
from the lower classes). While criminal law mainly deals with criminals of low status,
the transgressions of highly respected individuals (in the course of their occupation) or
companies are not considered and treated as
real
crimes by the law, the general public
or many criminologists.
A third main source for expanding the scope of criminology comes from the 'social
constructionist' or 'labelling approach' to crime that was developed in the 1960s by
sociologists such as Howard Becker (1963). Considering the variety and changeability
of 'crime', criminology should also be concerned with understanding the processes by
which certain behaviours come to be defined as criminal (Walklate 2007: 5). Laws are
the result of norms, morals and the influence of so-called 'moral entrepreneurs' (Becker
1963), persons seeking to influence a group to adopt and enforce a certain norm. Some
moral entrepreneurs are more successful than others in getting the necessary support
for having particular forms of harmful behaviour condemned in a formal way by means
of criminalization.
Which actors have sufficient power and possibilities to have certain behaviours
that they consider undesirable or harmful to be criminalized? Becker notes that a
'moral crusade' by the so-called moral entrepreneurs is usually more successful when
they have influential positions - i.e. they belong to the upper social strata of society.
Some actors, usually those in more socially privileged positions, have better access to
the criminal justice system than others. These premises and questions have profound
implications for the study of crimes and harms regarding the exploitation of natural
resources, as they might highlight how processes of criminalization do or do not take
place.
Taking Sellin's (1938) and Sutherland's (1940; 1983) criticism of the restrictive,
legalistic understanding of crime further, Herman and Julia Schwendinger advocate
that we should assess the criminality of acts according to their infringement of basic
human rights (Schwendinger & Schwendinger 1970: 117). With human rights as the
main criterion for defining crime, they perceive criminals as those individuals, social
relationships or social systems that deny others the fulfilment of rights “absolutely
essential for the realization of a great number of values […] in many spheres of
life'' (Schwendinger and Schwendinger 1970: 136-137). This notion of crime as a
human rights violation is an important input to a HRBA within or complementary to
a criminological approach to harms and crimes in natural resource exploitation.
This expansion in the criminological notion of crime to include other forms of law
or norms breaking, or to talk about crime when human rights are being violated, is
an essential prerequisite when thinking and researching about so-called 'crimes of the
powerful' (Pearce 1976). Building upon Sutherland's (1940; 1983) concept of white
collar crime, this notion takes the concept further and frames it in a political economy
approach to crime, focusing on the interactions between society's class structure and
struggles, ruling class ideology, the state, and the functions of the criminal justice
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