Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
system in global capitalism. Despite their remarkably harmful nature, 'crimes of the
powerful' are not always defined as criminal offences, but most often encompass a mix
of legal, unethical, illegal and criminal practices by powerful actors.
There are four interrelated subcategories of 'crimes of the powerful' that are par-
ticularly interesting for the theoretical perspective taken here. First, we use the notion
of 'corporate crime', which refers to illegal offences and harmful acts committed by
officers and employees of corporations to promote corporate interests (Clinard and
Quinney 1973; Clinard and Yaeger 1980; Pearce and Snider 1995; Pearce and Tombs
2002; Friedrichs 2004; Passas and Goodwin 2004). Various forms of crimes and harms
committed by enterprises or corporations extracting or exploiting natural resources,
from fraud and tax evasion to safety violations, pollution or even murder, are widely
discussed and researched by these authors and highly applicable to both cases tackled
by the LAR project.
The second subcategory, 'governmental crime', is used as a blanket term for the
whole range of crimes committed in a governmental context, whether by state agen-
cies and officials on behalf of the state (
state crime
) or by officials and politicians
for direct personal benefit (
political white collar crime
) (Friedrichs 2004: 116; Cohen
2001; Ermann and Lundman 2002; Green and Ward 2004). Governmental crime
might be committed by individuals or organizations for economic or political gain,
and includes actions defined as criminal by national or international law (e.g. geno-
cide, war crimes, corruption, bribery, etc.), as well as 'crimes of omission', in which
state negligence produces clear and severe harm. These 'crimes of omission', which
might not (yet) constitute criminal offences, are particularly relevant (and prevalent)
in the realm of economic, social and cultural rights violations, and, as we will further
argue from a green criminological perspective, in the field of crimes and harms against
nature.
Drawing on the intersections of corporate and governmental crime, a third notion
in our project worth exploring is that of 'state-corporate crime' (Friedrichs 2002;
Kramer, Michalowski and Kauzlarich 2002; Michalowski and Kramer 2006). State-
corporate crime is defined as “illegal or socially injurious action that occurs when
one or more institutions of political governance pursue a goal in direct cooperation
with one or more institutions of economic production or distribution'' (Michalowski
and Kramer 2006: 15). Many of the illegal practices and harmful behaviours in the
exploitation of natural resources in the two regions tackled by LAR originate or mani-
fest in the intersection between the state (officials) and mining, energy or agro-business
companies.
Fourth and last, another concept to be used and applied is that of 'organized
crime'. This is a far more problematic and vague concept since most forms of crimes
are organized, certainly those committed by powerful actors for financial gain. Despite
the hundreds of definitions and the vast literature accumulated on this matter, we
feel that a critical, relational concept of organized crime can be useful to describe
and analyze the connections and overlaps between illegal enterprises, groups or net-
works involved in the production and distribution of illegal goods of services (from
mafia-like organizations to unorganized ad-hoc networks or groups), and wider legal
networks and structures (state, legal economy and society) at both local and global
levels (Chambliss 1989; Ruggiero 1996; 2000; Friman and Andreas 1999; Paoli 2002;
Siegel et al. 2002). Illegal drugs (coca cultivation and cocaine trafficking), non-state
Search WWH ::
Custom Search