NCJ Number
141096
Date Published
Unknown
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This paper advocates the criminalization of corporate actions that victimize employees, consumers, and the environment, as well as the wider use of imprisonment for corporate officers who are involved in these criminal activities.
Abstract
The new left realist approach applied here calls for a war against white-collar crime as a means of redressing the harm to the victims and as a praxis to support the rights of the capital-poor classes. Statistics are cited which show that workplace injuries caused by exposure to toxic chemicals, repetitive trauma, and other work-related illnesses are rising dramatically. The primary agency responsible for regulating worker safety, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, has never jailed an employer for wrongful death or serious injury. However, as the author notes, the environmental movement has been much more successful in using the law against corporate agents; the role that community tracking committees play in demanding industry audits of chemical production, toxic use reduction plans, waste removal, and evacuation plans set an example for the left realist approach to crime fighting. The second section of this paper discusses compliance-based strategies, which the author maintains serve only to rationalize the corporate victimization of society and to disguise the real causes of corporate crime in the private control and use of capital by the dominant classes. 16 references