Science, values and politics: an insider’s reflections on corporate crime research

Diverse social and political forces have long shaped research on corporate crime and its social control in the U.S., and they have responded to this work in plural and contradictory ways. These forces range from the abstract and institutional to the local and personal. In this essay, I reflect on my three decades of research experience in this arena in an examination of these forces and their implications for research and public policy. More overtly than other forms of criminological research, the study of corporate lawbreaking has conjoined issues of values and politics with issues of science. This feature of the work has made consistently problematic such foundational questions as how to define the subject of inquiry, how to study it, and how to communicate about it. While this volatility has contributed to the ongoing marginalization of this research stream in both academic criminology and regulatory policy, it has also created a certain intellectual dynamism that should attract future generations of investigators to these questions, and to greater cross-disciplinary efforts to address them. Such developments may even pave the way to greater consideration of such research by policy-makers, should socioeconomic conditions in the U.S. and around the world raise the public salience of corporate wrongdoing. ‘Why do you want to study corporate managers? We know how they think.’ ‘…a book entitled Corporate Crime automatically puts us on guard to defend the corporations…such a book should never have been written in the first place.’      

What is Crime?

Since its emergence in the 19th century, orthodox criminology has suffered from the contradiction of claiming, on the one hand, to be a value-neutral, intellectual discipline, and on the other, operating as part of the ideological apparatus of the political state by taking state definitions of what is crime and who are its criminals as the starting points for criminological inquiry. This essay examines the ways in which criminology has suffered from this internal contradiction, with particular attention to how it has been constrained by political, economic, and professional forces to focus primarily on crimes whose collective harm to society falls well below the harms caused by the wrongful, but often legal acts of economic and political elites. It concludes with the recognition that the kind of critical inquiry emblematic of the work of Bill Chambliss is essential if criminology hopes to remain relevant to the challenges of the future.     

Fractured Lives,Splintered Knowledge: Making Criminological Sense of the January, 2015 Terrorist Attacks in Paris

Cottee (Br J Criminol 54(6):981–1001, 2014) makes the case that criminology has much to contribute to an understanding of theistic violence. However the ‘hubris of positivism’ (Young in The criminological imagination, Polity, Cambridge, 2011) curtails the criminological imagination and this is particularly evident in the debates that permeate contemporary understandings of religious extremism and radicalisation. Using the terrorist attacks in France 2015 as a touchstone, this paper explores the current state of criminological engagement with these issues. First a synopsis of orthodox current criminological talk about religious extremism and violent crime is considered. Next a critical analysis of the events in Paris based around what is ‘known’ about them is offered in the light of this knowledge. Finally, drawing on the work of Young (2011) the implications of this analysis for criminology are considered resulting in a refinement of the biases identified by Cottee (2014).     

The Neglect of Quantitative Research in Green Criminology and Its Consequences

While interest in green criminology has rapidly expanded over the past twenty-five years, much of this growth has occurred on the periphery of orthodox criminology. This article suggests that green criminology’s marginalization is partially a result of its non-quantitative methodology. We hypothesize that non-quantitative tendencies within green criminology distance it from orthodox criminology because orthodox criminology values quantitative methods (Tewksbury et al. in J Crim Justice Educ 16(2):265–279, 2005). Here, we examine how neglecting quantitative research methods may contribute to inattention to green criminology within orthodox criminology, and we consider what can be done to change that situation. We suggest that employing quantitative approaches within green criminology is one way to increase its appeal to mainstream criminology, and that quantitative studies, in conjunction with other research methodologies, can also enhance generalizability of findings, influence policy, and advance theory construction and hypothesis testing.     

On an entrepreneurial criminology of mass political violence

This article examines an entrepreneurial criminology of mass political violencewithin the broader set of criminological communications on this theme, and identifies some troubling dimensions of the criminological closures on which the enterprise rests. The criminological enterprise over mass political violence testifies to ambitions of external expansion at the expense of other social scientific analyses, that are represented as ill-qualified for the study of this particular object, while evacuating from its conception of criminology intellectual traditions averse to the promotion of criminalization as a means to constitute and respond to troubling events. The normative values advanced in enterprising calls seem to have led to a failure to submit certain assumptions to rigorous intellectual (and political) critique. The result is an analytic conservatism that, perhaps unwittingly, reinforces dominant assumptions about crime, as well as an uncritical adoption of liberal internationalism and western cultural dominance.     

What can Southern Criminology Contribute to a Post-Race Agenda?

Drawing on Raewyn Connell’s Southern Theory (2007), Carrington et al. (British Journal of Criminology, 56(1), 1–20, 2015) have called for a de-colonization and democratization of criminological knowledge, which, they argue, has privileged the epistemologies of the global North. Taking up the challenge of “southern criminology,” in this paper we examine the concept of race as a political artifact of northern thinking. The idea of race is durable in criminology. To illustrate this, we examine the racialization of Aboriginal Australians. Given the relationship between processes of racialization and criminalization, criminology should avoid engaging in practices which produce or reinforce racial schema. Further, with reference to southern epistemologies, we offer an alternative construct of human difference and diversity grounded in discourses of belonging specific to Australasian cultures.     

Toward a Green-Cultural Criminology of “the Rural”

There are many connections between the various strands of critical criminology. Previously, we highlighted common issues between green and cultural criminology, while also noting some of the ways that each perspective could potentially benefit from cross-fertilization (Brisman and South in Crime Media Cult 9(2):115–135, 2013, Green cultural criminology: constructions of environmental harm, consumerism and resistance to ecocide. Routledge, Oxford, 2014; McClanahan in Crit Criminol. doi:10.1007/s10612-014-9241-8, 2014). In this article, we extend our analysis to consider green, cultural and rural criminologies through the exposition of several key issues, including “the rural” as local context in which exploitative global forces may exercise power; agribusiness and the food/profit chain; farming and the pollution of land, water and air; and finally, cultural/media images and narratives of rural life. We focus more specifically on this final intersectionality through an analysis of Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom (2010), analyzing his depictions of rural people, environmental activists, and the rural environment through the issue of mountaintop removal. We conclude our article by identifying several examples of key directions in which the intersectionality of green, cultural and rural criminologies might proceed, including trafficking and abuse of farmworkers, harms associated with the cultivation of quinoa, and a critical interpretation of media and popular narrative depictions of environmental issues within rural contexts.     

Generosity: No Doubt, but at Times Excessive and Delusive

One of the ways in which the artificial languages of mathematics are “generous”, that is, in which they assists the advance of thought, is through its establishment of advanced operatory structures that permit an even further advance of intuition. However, this generosity may be delusive, suggest ideas which in the longer run turn out to be untenable. The paper analyses two cases of “honest generosity”, namely a “proof” of the sign rule “less times less makes plus” from the 1340s and a result in partition theory obtained by Euler by means of rash manipulations of infinite series and products, case-Cantor’s introduction of transfinite numbers from 1895-and (in modern terms) a failed attempt to extend the semi-group of algebraic powers into a complete group, also from c. 1340. Gewöhnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hört es müsse sich dabei wohl auch was denken lassen Goethe, Faust I, 2565-2566 He gives the kids free samples because he knows full well that today’s young innocent faces will be tomorrow’s clientele Tom Lehrer, “The Old Dope Peddler”      

Green Criminology Before ‘Green Criminology’: Amnesia and Absences

Although the first published use of the term ‘green criminology’ seems to have been made by Lynch (Green criminology. Aldershot, Hampshire, 1990/2006), elements of the analysis and critique represented by the term were established well before this date. There is much criminological engagement with, and analysis of, environmental crime and harm that occurred prior to 1990 that deserves acknowledgement. In this article, we try to illuminate some of the antecedents of green criminology. Proceeding in this way allows us to learn from ‘absences’, i.e. knowledge that existed but has been forgotten. We conclude by referring to green criminology not as an exclusionary label or barrier but as a symbol that guides and inspires the direction of research.     

The Coverage of American Indians and Alaskan Natives in Criminal Justice and Criminology Introductory Textbooks

This paper examines the coverage of American Indians and Alaskan Natives (AI/AN) in the most widely read introductory criminal justice and criminology books published between 2004 and 2010. The current research extends upon Young’s (J Crim Justice Educ 1:111–116, 1990) assessment of AI/ANs in criminal justice and criminology introductory textbooks, where he found no mention of AI/ANs. The replication of Young (J Crim Justice Educ 1:111–116, 1990) is especially important because AI/ANs continue to face a wide array of social issues (i.e. substance abuse and poverty), which leads to an overrepresentation of AI/ANs in the criminal justice system. To accomplish this, a content analysis was conducted on thirty-one introductory criminal justice and criminology textbooks to determine whether AI/ANs have received more academic coverage in current textbooks. The findings reveal that introductory criminal justice and criminology textbooks still under represent AI/ANs despite experiencing crime, victimization, and justice related problems.     

Socio-political change and crime

This article offers an epistimological approach to criminological inquiry that draws on political and economic perspectives to create a theoretical context for hate crimes and xenophobia in contemporary Germany. The paper concludes that criminology as a discipline may be inadequate to grasp the complexities of criminal interactions and that criminology must draw heavily on the perspectives of other disciplines. Ultimately, it may be more important to illicit ideas rather than attempt to know the truth. The author wishes to note that this paper draws on an earlier published work and was constructed post facto from his comments and presentation at the conference.     

Teaching Criminological Theory: The Power of Film and Music

Interest in utilizing pop culture as a means of teaching and enhancing students’ understanding of complex or abstract ideas in the classroom has increased over the course of the past decade. This includes the use of film, television, fiction books, the internet, and music. The fields of criminology and criminal justice have also increasingly noted the value of using such means to teach about atrocities such as state crime, transnational crime and corporate crimes as well as issues of inequality, racism, and classism. Film, music and television can also be great tools to enhance the understanding of and ability to apply criminological theory. Most articles that have focused on incorporating the use of a ‘popular criminology’ within the classroom, however, have concentrated on one form or another of ‘pop culture’ (i.e., film). This article seeks to add to the existing literature by providing an example of how the use of film combined with music can not only enhance undergraduate criminology and criminal justice students’ ability to grasp criminological theory and apply it in their everyday lives, but also can be utilized as tools for exams.     

Deconstructing Crime and Nature or, What Does Post Humanism Have to Do With Criminology?

The aim of this paper is to extend some of the theoretical concerns that Marcus Felson (2006) opens up in Crime and Nature by considering the contribution of post humanist political ecology to the construction of crime and nature that he proposes. Post humanism problematises dichotomous understandings of nature and culture as well as related binaries that follow from that division, suggesting that dominant assumptions about nature and the non human undermine antiracist and feminist efforts. While Felson (2006) takes steps towards troubling the nature/culture binary, he fails to question the constructed character of crime and crime prevention, thereby leaving unarticulated a critical problematisation of the exclusionary logics that underlie dominant practices and ways of thinking as race, sex, class and species fundamentally determine the nature of criminological knowledge. Abstracting crime from social context produces a partial analysis as spaces are reduced to their supposed propensity for criminal activity and some spaces are produced as always already criminal. Without examining and understanding how power relations intersect in the context of crime it is difficult to alter those relations to promote social justice.     

In search of criminological tradition: the development of criminology in Taiwan

There has been a growing interest in the historical development of criminology(ies) throughout the world. This paper examines the development of criminology in Taiwan (Republic of China) using both questionnaire and interview data. Textbooks, institutional development, and research activity are taken as proxy measures of a criminological tradition. Beginning with criminology in Republican China (1929–1949), the article explores the key features of change in criminology against the background of Taiwan's own particular adoption of social, political and economic ‘modernisation’. Foreign influence and the contemporary meaning of ‘indigenous’ are considered. The article ends with a research agenda for a grounded historical sociology of criminology on Taiwan; key identified research questions relate to sponsorship, research priorities and the production of criminological knowledge; the reception of research by policy communities and practitioners; the relationship between criminological knowledge and politics; and the processes of selective appropriation.     

The Radicalization of Democracy: Conflict,Social Movements and Terrorism

The idea of democracy is being championed across the world, with some fifty new countries embracing this type of political system between 1974 and 2011 (Freedom House Anxious dictators, wavering democracies: global freedom under pressure, Freedom House, Washington, 2016). Simultaneously, however, dissatisfaction has grown due to the perceived incapacity of democracy to deal with collective problems, hence the necessity to reconfigure it and redraw some of its principles. This paper links the analysis of the recent evolution of democratic systems with the trajectory of socio-political conflicts and the changing features of contemporary terrorism. It examines, therefore, two intertwined phenomena, namely the radicalization of democracy and the radicalization of the other. It concludes by stressing that encouraging dissent and heeding contentious claims made by social movements may be one way of mitigating both types of radicalization. Embedded in the tradition of critical criminology, this paper attempts to demonstrate that only by outflanking conventional categories of analysis can the criminological community aspire to grasp such thorny contemporary phenomena.     

Deconstructing Criminology’s Origin Stories

The global production of knowledge is grossly skewed to the northern Anglophone world (Hogg et al. in International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 6(1), 1–7, 2017; Connell 2007). It should be no surprise therefore that criminology’s origin stories are derivative of northern experiences, yet generalised as universal theories of crime causation. In this article, we argue that the origin stories of criminological theory translated the ‘darker’, ‘hairier’ and ‘muscular’ masculinities of the global south into prototypes of dangerousness. These prototypes were first articulated as scientific claims in the nineteenth century works of Lombroso, but have been refined and embedded in mainstream criminological discourses well into the present, mainly through the quantitative study of social disorganisation, ‘race’ and racialised masculinities as variables in crime causation. The paper concedes that while deeply troubling expressions of violent masculinity exist now and in the past in the global south, it is mistaken to conceive this violence simply as expressions of atavism or social disorganisation associated with a less civilised world. On the contrary, this paper argues that the violence of colonality itself has had, and continues to have, a criminogenic impact on the present.     

State Crime,the Prophetic Voice and Public Criminology Activism

State crimes are, by far, the most destructive of all crimes. The use and threat to use nuclear weapons, the aerial bombardment of civilians, wars of aggression, torture, the failure to mitigate global warming and adapt to climate change ecocide, along with myriad other state-corporate crimes, fill the world with death and devastation, misery and want. This article argues that criminologists have a responsibility to act as public criminologists by speaking in the “prophetic voice” concerning these crimes and their victims, and then acting in the political arena in an attempt to control and prevent these harms. The paper briefly describes three approaches to engaging in what Belknap (Criminology 53:1–23, 2015) calls “criminology activism” on these issues. The first approach is for criminologists to counter the cultures of denial and normalization that usually cover state crimes. The second involves contesting the global corporate capitalist system and the power of the American capitalist state in an effort to achieve specific progressive policy reforms and structural changes in the global political economy. Finally, criminologists can work to enhance the democratization of the international political community and strengthen the ability of specific international legal institutions to control state crimes.     

Interspecies Violence and Crimes of Dissent: Communication Ethics and Legitimacy in Message Crimes Involving Wildlife

In this article, we consider the phenomenon of message crimes involving harm to wildlife from a sociological and criminological perspective. Using a case study of dissident Nordic hunters killing protected wolves to send a message to the state agencies responsible for their conservation, we engage philosophically with the question of wildlife victimhood and why interspecies violence is unjustifiable as a mode of political dissent. As an alternative to the species justice perspective in green criminology, we examine how the acts disrespect animals as moral subjects of public communication and frustrate dialogue regarding what is owed to them in terms of political justice.     

Meeting the enemy: American exceptionalism and international law

Howard Zinn has been classified in a number of ways for his many social contributions. However, despite the breadth of his work, he has never been considered a criminologist. It is likely that this is the result of the inaccurate perceptions many Americans have about crime being a predominantly street‐level social problem. Zinn maintains that the social harms caused by those in positions of political and economic power are in fact crimes against humanity that are far more destructive and violent than the actions our legal system has historically deemed criminal. He also points to the ways our criminal justice system is unjust and ineffective, and has demonstrated how social inequality ensures that the disadvantaged will be further subordinated by the criminal justice system. Zinn’s critical contributions about the most significant sources of social harm, the unjust nature of the American justice system, and the influence of social inequality offer an unorthodox criminological perspective that deserves special consideration. His unconventional criminology calls for increasing social justice by means of political dissent, social resistance, and civil disobedience.     

Tensions for Green Criminology

This article examines tensions that for the most part exist outside green criminology that could—and should—be brought under the green criminological gaze—issues that are not necessarily the province of green criminology but which have implications for the study of environmental crime and harm. Examples include: the conflicting messages that Western society encounters with respect to “victims” and “survivors”; claims of a lack of future orientation (Hayward 2012) in contrast to assertions of a risk-aversion in late modernity (Giddens 1999); frictions between the “precautionary principle” (Magnus 2008) and “precautionary logic” (Aas 2013); and the peculiarities of the “war on youth” (Grossberg 2001) in an era of “overparenting” (Kamenetz 2015) and “overindulged youth” (Kolbert 2012). The goal of the article is less to promulgate an agenda for green criminology than to heighten awareness of issues and contradictions that may contribute to environmental despoliation and degradation or frustrate efforts to address such harm.