The Downsizing of America as White Collar Crime Revisited: In the Era of Trump

• In Event: Criminological Perspectives on White-Collar Crime

Abstract

In 1997 – twenty years ago – the author published an article entitled “The Downsizing of America: A neglected dimension of the white collar crime problem” (Crime, Law & Social Change 28: 351-366; also presented at the 1996 Meeting of the ASC in Chicago). In the 1990s there was growing concern about downsizing in the American economy, with devastating consequences for American workers. This article explored such downsizing in relation to white collar crime – and as a form of white collar crime itself. In the surreal 2016 presidential campaign season Donald Trump recognized that downsizing was widely experience as a “crime” against their well-being and future prospects by working class Americans, and he had great success with this narrative. The legitimacy of the established political and economic order was challenged. A criminological interpretation of the meaning of this narrative in relation to perceptions of crime and legitimacy, its implications going forward, and a fundamentally alternative progressive response to the downsizing as crime phenomenon is advanced here.

Author

• David O Friedrichs, University of Scranton