Not Keeping to the Script: the case of organised white-collar crimes

• In Event: Sticking to the script? Innovations in organised crime reduction

Abstract

In this paper our storyline deviates slightly away from the panel focus, to consider the ‘scripts’ of white-collar crimes. Sutherland (1983) recognised white-collar crimes as ‘organised crime’, not in the contemporary sense where organised crime discourse is associated with illegitimate, external criminal gangs and criminal enterprise, but in the need to understand the formal and informal ‘organisation’ of such white-collar crime activities. White-collar ‘offenders’ may organise their behaviours collaboratively, through varied structures and mechanisms, and over time for individual/organisational gain, with a significant point of difference between the white-collar criminal and the ‘professional thief‘, being their self- and public perception. Following this, the paper examines a theme central to analysing how white-collar and crimes are organised: the breaking down of the elements of criminal organisation into its component parts, a process that has been operationalised through ‘script analysis’. We consider the importance of investigating the nature of how people identify and collaborate with others, organising their behaviours to realise some white-collar crime opportunities; the routine activities or ‘scripts’ through which they must go to accomplish (or not) their intended behaviours; and the conditions or preconditions (necessary, sufficient, or contingent) that link the motivations of individual offenders to the legacies of modern political economies. Crucial to understanding white-collar crimes is a comprehensive and detailed understanding of these scripts, or procedural dynamics, of the white-collar crime commissioning or unfolding processes, and their interaction with specific opportunity structures. The ‘scripts’ of context-specific white-collar crimes are a product of deeper underlying structures and routinised patterns of business activities. In our view, this framing is useful for developing a fuller theoretical account of the fundamental aspects of white-collar crimes and for gaining insight into the organisation of these crimes

Authors

• Nicholas Lord, The University of Manchester, UK

• Mike Levi, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University