Are Businesses Treated Differently? A Comparison of the Individual Victim and the Corporate Victim in the Criminal Courtroom

• NCJ Number: 99406
• Journal: Sociological Inquiry Volume: 55 Issue: 3 Dated: (Summer 1985) Pages: 225-238
• Author(s): C Kruttschnitt
• Date Published: 1985
• Length: 14 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Drawing on a number of theories, this paper explores both why and how the capacity for collective action why and how the capacity for collective action influences deviance processing decisions.

Abstract

Specifically, data for a sample of male and female defendants convicted of both theft and forgery offenses are examined to estimate the effects on criminal processing decisions of (1) the organizational, as opposed to the individual, victim, (2) the organization of individual offenders, as indicated by the presence of co-defendants, and (3) the respective intimacy in the victim-offender relationship on both the organizational and individual level. While organization on the part of the criminal offenders appears to have no effect on the dispositional process, the presence of an organizational victim ensures longer periods of probationary supervision for the respective offender. Moreover, this relationship remains regardless of whether the defendant was involved with the organization he victimized. Accordingly, this study suggests both that businesses are in fact treated differently from individuals in the criminal courtroom and < that the expansion of our analysis of victim attributes in the study of deviance processing decisions is long overdue. (Author abstract)