CORPORATE CRIME

Corporate Crime

Name of Writer

Name of InstitutionTable of Contents

Introduction3

Types of Corporate Crimes3

Financial Crimes4

Crimes against Customers4

Crimes against Employees4

Environmental Offences5

Corporate Crime vs. Street Crime5

Factors Behind Corporate Crime6

Regulation of Corporate Crime7

Solutions for Corporate Crimes7

UK's Attorney General's take on Corporate Crime8

The Confusions about Corporate Crime8

Conclusion9

References11

Corporate Crime

Introduction

In criminology, corporate crime refers to as crimes committed by organizations or corporation having a separate legal and business entity that is treated as an individual person, or by individual that mange or work on behalf of the corporations. Corporate crime overlaps with three types of crimes i.e. white collar crime, organized crime, state-corporate crime and is different from street crime and occupational crime. In Edward Sutherland's words; white collar crime is defined as a notion to corporate crimes. He categorized corporate crimes in the following categories:

Misrepresentation in financial statements of corporations

Manipulation in the stock market

Commercial bribery

Bribery of public officials directly or indirectly

Misrepresentation in advertisement and salesmanship

Embezzlement and misappropriation of funds

Misapplication of funds in receiverships and bankruptcies

Types of Corporate Crimes

Corporate crimes include a variety of crimes that corporations indulge in, in order to maximize their wealth and profits. However, corporate crime studies generally focus on a single type or category of corporate crime at a time. For this purpose, amongst the various categories four categories or types are commonly used namely; financial offences, offences against customers, offences against employees, and environmental offences.

Financial Crimes

Financial offences comes first on the list of categories of corporate crimes since they are the ones that can pose huge damages to the society at large, and affects all the stakeholder's of the corporation within the society. These offences include: illegal share dealings, hostile mergers and acquisitions, tax evasion, bribery and many other form of illegal accounting and financial practices. There are large numbers of such offences that have taken place in Britain as well which include large corporations such as Barrings, Natwest, the Maxwell, and BCCI to name a few.

Crimes against Customers

Second to financial crimes comes a broader and general category of crimes and offences against customers. Example of such practices include illegal sales and marketing practices, the sale of unfit and unsafe goods, cartel pricing and price leadership, false or illegal labelling of the information about the product, fraudulent testing of the products.

Crimes against Employees

Thirdly, the crimes arising out of the employment contract or relationship, which include both crimes against employees or prospective employees in the case of new or potential hires through recruitment and selection by employers. Crimes in this category includes cases of sexual and racial discrimination in recruitment or during employment, violations against wage laws, failure to provide employee health and safety, which include illegal workplace exposure, failure to provide safe work environment and equipment. These type offences have been controlled in Britain to a great extent since the 1980s through thorough deregulation and re-regulations. However, there are still some loopholes that need to get plugged in order to further reduce such offences.

Environmental Offences

The last and final category of offences deals with crimes undertaken against ...