NCJ Number
219862
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 47 Issue: 4 Dated: July 2007 Pages: 531-550
Date Published
July 2007
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the key ways in which "safety crimes" (violations of work place safety standards by employers, resulting in worker injuries and deaths) remain excluded from criminology's definitions of "violence."
Abstract
The paper reviews three recent examples of approaches to or discussions of "violence." First, the author examines the discussion of violence in the Oxford Handbook of Criminology, probably the most used undergraduate textbook in criminology. Second, he considers the range of projects associated with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Violence Project. Third, the paper considers at greater length contemporary academic work on "workplace violence" in the United Kingdom. Each of these sample areas was selected for discussion because it is a strong and therefore useful testing ground for examining criminology's persistent inability to include workplace injury and death in its definitions of "violence." The discussion of each of the three approaches to violence leads to the general conclusion that criminological definitions of "violence" still fail to recognize offenses against workers and the public that stem from "safety crimes" by employers. The paper concludes with speculation about the preconditions for any such recognition by criminologists. This includes a discussion of frameworks for studying violence within which safety crimes, or corporate violence in general, are contained. 68 references