Taming Business? Understanding Effectiveness in the Control of White Collar and Corporate Crime

• In Event: What is to be Done About Crime and Punishment: International Perspectives

Abstract

The harms generated by business activity are undeniable and their persistence, despite efforts at their control, striking. Criminologists, amongst others, have documented the range of these harms from financial to the deaths and injuries of workers and of the public devastation of the environment and the abuse of ideals the market system itself through insider trading and market manipulation. The focus of this paper is to critically analyse the possibilities of control and reduction of these harms by placing them in their economic and political context. The chapter below argues that control measures are best understood when framed not only around the methods of control (‘punishment or persuasion’) but also around the degree to which they explicitly attempt to reshape who can and should influence business behaviour and the institutional conditions under which business activity occurs.

Author

• Fiona Haines, University of Melbourne, Australia