Governance, Risk and Punishment: The Case of Insurance Fraud

• In Event: Understanding and Addressing White-Collar Crime

Abstract

Research on risks, security, private policing and penal governance has furthered our understanding of contemporary forms of risk-management in crime control and punishment. However, while this body of literature focus on the governance of risk and ‘dangerous’ persons how policing functions themselves are governed as risk is an additional aspect that awaits further research. This article aims to join these two dimensions of risk management in crime control. It draws on 38 qualitative interviews with representatives from the seven largest insurance companies in Sweden (together, they account for nearly 80 percent of the market) and shows how insurers’ produce security through discipline, control and punishment. These techniques impose a mutual responsibility and censure among claimants and employees for corporate profit. Deviations from this norm are punished thorough a set of punitive sanctions (i.e. increased premium levels, less beneficial insurance conditions, cancelled policies, the civil litigation process, reduced salaries, and less discretion). In addition, punishment is meted out through the application of civil law rather than the criminal process. This article discusses the consequences of these practices for the social construction of fraud and for the role risk plays in crime control.

Author

• Anders Stenström, Stockholm University