Risk-Profiling Corporations: Patterns and Trends of Organizational Characteristics of Corporate involvement in Atrocity Crimes

• In Event: The Criminology of Regulation: Special Issue of Regulation & Governance

Abstract

Since WWII, numerous corporations have been involved in genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. As these crimes only recently have entered the criminological canon, they also have been largely ignored within the area of white collar and corporate crime. As the involvement in atrocity crimes of transnationally operating corporations has become a major concern worldwide, criminological contributions, in particular from a corporate crime perspective are more important than ever. With the development of hard law and soft law instruments that require corporations to conduct human rights due diligence and to prevent becoming involved in the most serious human rights abuses, criminological theorising and research offers a wealth of preventive and regulatory mechanisms. This contribution starts from a criminological perspective and explores corporate characteristics that are conducive to corporations’ engagement in situations where they are at risk of becoming involved in atrocity crimes. As such, we are looking at ‘motivational factors’ as risk factors and identify trends and patterns that are both persistent and related to specific time and space contexts. Our analyses are based on a data set with more than 200 cases of alleged corporate involvement spanning the time since 1940. We use latent cluster modelling to explore patterns of branches of industry, corporate structures, business activities and characteristics of the crimes, in order to establish risk profiles of corporations across time and space. We identify six risk-profiles across the decades from 1940 – 2020 that are conducive to corporate engagement in massive violence and discuss these results both in terms of criminological and regulatory theory and potential interrelations between the two.

Authors

• Wim Huisman, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

• Susanne Karstedt, Griffith University

• Annika van Baar, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

• Rebecca Endtricht, University of Hamburg