Regulating harm: States, corporations, and the social harms resulting from the failures of law and regulation

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

This panel comprises a series of papers examining the failings of law and regulation and their disproportionate and socially harmful impact on the public. The papers focus on different forms of corporate, state, and state-corporate harm in a broad range of settings, such as human and labour rights, rights to health, welfare rights, and democratic rights. However, they come together to argue that the harms resulting from the failures of these laws and regulations are systemic and cannot be understood as being singular, isolated, or separate from one another. Indeed, they stem from similar causes: colonialism and neoliberal capitalism. Adopting a critical criminology and socio-legal lens, we argue that it is through understanding these links that we can better open ourselves to the potential of dismantling these harmful systems and therefore to more transformative and meaningful solutions to these harms. The panel explores the intersecting themes of public (dis)empowerment, where law and regulation seeks to empower or employ the agency of individuals, and governing though the failure of law and regulation.

Subtopic

• Topic 1: Perspectives on Crime and Criminal Behavior / Critical Criminology

Chair

• Elin Jönsson, Department of Criminology, Stockholm University

Individual Presentations

• “Knowingly profiting” from forced labour? Australia's failure to ban imports, the harms of state-corporate benevolence, and the role of academic activism - Marinella Marmo, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia; Rhiannon Bandiera, Maynooth University, Ireland

• Neoliberalism, state-corporate power and regulatory failure: the harms of prescription and non-prescription medicine regulation in Australia - Rhiannon Bandiera, Maynooth University, Ireland

• State surveillance of welfare recipients: an examination of Irish efforts to limit welfare fraud - Ciara Bracken-Roche, Maynooth University

• A seat at the table: integrating victims and victim concerns into the negotiation of non-trial settlements - Jennifer Quaid, University of Ottawa