By Luke Danagher

This paper presents a novel argument proposing greater recognition of the stigmatic nature of the ‘psychopath’ label in the corporate crime context, particularly in relation to its use within academic research and in criminal judgments. Labelling theory and a communicative account of criminal law and punishment are applied to the issue. The stigmatic nature of the label, as well as its potential to over-stigmatise corporate offenders is assessed. Recommendations are forwarded, primarily in relation to the need for greater judicial engagement with the topic of psychopathy and corporate crime, and greater recognition of the stigmatic nature of the psychopathy label. Alternative labels are forwarded.

Crim Law Forum (2025).

By J. R. Nicolás-Carlock and  Luna-Pla

In recent years, the analysis of economic crime and corruption in procurement has benefited from integrative studies that acknowledge the interconnected nature of the procurement ecosystem. Following this line of research, we present a networks approach for the analysis of shell-companies operations in procurement that makes use of contracting and ownership data under one framework to gain knowledge about the organized crime behavior that emerges in this setting. In this approach, ownership and management data are used to identify connected components in shell-company networks that, together with the contracting data, allows to develop an alternative representation of the traditional buyer-supplier network: the module-component bipartite network, where the modules are groups of buyers and the connected components are groups of suppliers. This is applied to two documented cases of procurement corruption in Mexico characterized by the involvement of large groups of shell-companies in the misappropriation of millions of dollars across many sectors. We quantify the economic impact of single versus connected shell-companies operations. In addition, we incorporate metrics for the diversity of operations and favoritism levels. This paper builds into the quantitative organized crime in the private sector studies and contributes by proposing a networks approach for preventing fraud and understanding the need for legal reforms.   

Trends in Organized Crime (2024) 27: pages 412–428

By John R. Hipp, Cheyenne Hodgen

Research has typically focused on how certain types of business establishments are associated with the location of crime on street blocks. Studies in this genre, however, often have not accounted for the general business context of the block on which a business is located. This study uses a large sample of blocks in Southern California to test whether the context of businesses matters. We assess whether a nonlinear relationship exists between the total businesses on a block and crime, whether differences exist based on broad categories of businesses—consumer-facing businesses, blue-collar businesses, and white-collar businesses—and whether the mixing of businesses on a block impacts crime. The study finds strong evidence that blocks with more business mixing have higher levels of crime. A 1 standard deviation increase in business mixing is associated with 35%–95% more crime. The relationship between business mixing and crime is moderated by the size of the population on the block. Evidence also shows differences in relationships with crime between consumer-facing and white- or blue-collar businesses. Only modest evidence shows that specific business types are related to crime levels after accounting for this general business context.

Criminology, Volume 62, Issue 4, 2024, pages 859-891

By Stephanie Holmes Didwania

Fraud is one of the most prosecuted crimes in the United States, yet scholarly and journalistic discourse about fraud and other financial crimes tends to focus on the absence of so-called “white-collar” prosecutions against wealthy executives. This Article complicates that familiar narrative. It contains the first nationwide account of how the United States actually prosecutes financial crime. It shows—contrary to dominant academic and public discourse—that the government prosecutes an enormous number of people for financial crimes and that these prosecutions disproportionately involve the least advantaged U.S. residents accused of low-level offenses. This empirical account directly contradicts the aspiration advanced by the FBI and Department of Justice that federal prosecution ought to be reserved for only the most egregious and sophisticated financial crimes. This article argues, in other words, that the term “white-collar crime” is a misnomer.

To build this empirical foundation, the Article uses comprehensive data of the roughly two million federal criminal cases prosecuted over the last three decades matched to county-level population data from the U.S. Census. It demonstrates the history, geography, and inequality that characterize federal financial crime cases, which include myriad crimes such as identity theft, mail and wire fraud, public benefits fraud, and tax fraud, to name just a few. It shows that financial crime defendants are disproportionately low-income and Black, and that this overrepresentation is not only a nationwide pattern, but also a pattern in nearly every federal district in the United States. What’s more, the financial crimes prosecuted against these overrepresented defendants are on average the least serious. This Article ends by exploring how formal law and policy, structural incentives, and individual biases could easily create a prosecutorial regime for financial crime that reinforces inequality based on race, gender, and wealth.

Northwestern Law & Econ Research Paper Forthcoming, outhern California Law Review, Vol. 97, 2024, 54 pages

By Nancy Frank

FROM CHAPTER 1: “OVER THE LAST ten to fifteen years, a number of tragic episodes have elevated public consciousness of crimes against health and safety. The Love Canal disaster, in which an entire neighborhood had to be permanently evacuated because it had been built on an abandoned chemical dump, became only a prelude to a growing awareness of hazardous waste disposal problems. In the Pinto case the Ford Motor Company was indicted on charges of reckless homicide for selling the Pinto even though the company allegedly was aware that the car had a tendency to explode when involved in rear-end collisions. The accident at Three Mile Island, in which a nuclear reactor started to melt down before technicians were able to bring it under control, dramatically illustrated the risks that are created and managed by profit-seeking firms.”

NY. Harrow and Heston. 1985. 112p.

By Brent Fisse and John Braithwaite

This book explains why accountability for corporate crime is rarely imposed under the present law, and proposes solutions that would help to extend responsibility to a wide range of actors. The authors develop an Accountability Model under which the courts and corporations work together by having the law harness the internal disciplinary systems of organizations. In this way accountability would be achieved across a much broader front than would otherwise be possible.

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 288p.

By Petter Gottschalk

This brief extends studies on how corporations respond to scandals by examining the evolution of the accounts that corporate agents develop after a scandal becomes public. Guided by the theory of accounts and a recently developed perspective on crisis management, its examines how the accounts developed by thirteen corporations caught up in highly publicized scandals changed from the time of initial exposure to the issuance of an investigative report. This brief continues the discussion of the broader managerial and social implications of the analysis of accounts, and analyses their effect on our understanding of the ability of corporations to weather serious scandals. It includes four case studies; from Switzerland, Moldova, Denmark, and Norway respectively.

Cham: Springer, 2020. 147p

Edited by Diane Vaughan, Henry N. Pontell and Gilbert Geis

Corporate crimes were once thought of as victimless offenses, but now—with billions of dollars and an increasingly global economy at stake—this is understood to be far from the truth.

The International Handbook of White-Collar and Corporate Crime explores the complex interplay of factors involved when corporate cultures normalize lawbreaking, and when organizational behavior is pushed to unethical (and sometimes inhumane) limits. Featuring original contributions from a panel of experts representing North America, Asia, Europe, and Australia, this timely volume presents multidisciplinary views on recent corporate wrongdoing affecting economic and social conditions worldwide.

New York: Springer, 2007. 702p.

By Colin King and Nicholas Lord

This book argues that there is a strong normative argument for using the criminal law as a primary response to corporate crime. In practice, however, corporate crimes are rarely dealt with through criminal sanctioning mechanisms. Rather, the preference – for both prosecutors and corporates – appears to be on negotiating out of the criminal process. Reflecting this emphasis on negotiation, this book examines the use of Civil Recovery Orders and Deferred Prosecution Agreements as responses to corporate crime, and discusses a variety of UK case studies. Drawing upon legal and criminological backgrounds, and with an emphasis on the conceptual frameworks of ‘negotiated justice’ and ‘legitimacy’, the authors examine the law, policy and practice of these enforcement responses. They offer an original, theoretically-informed analysis which is accessible to practitioners and researchers.

Cham: Springer, 2018. 167p.

By Chris Mathers

In Crime School: Money Laundering, a twenty-year law enforcement veteran of financial crime explains this felony in simple terms. Written anecdotally, the book describes what money laundering is and how the crimes behind it fit together.

Organized criminals operating both domestically and internationally corrupt bankers and subvert national economies through the use of drug money.

This book examines the history of money laundering from ancient times to the cocaine craze of the 1970s to the sophisticated, brutal techniques employed by today's terrorists and organized crime.

Lively and detailed, this book chronicles the stark realities and deadly dynamics of the lynchpin between organized crime and modern terrorism. It's a rare and fascinating look at a deadly world few have ever witnessed and lived to tell the story.

Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, 2004. 244p.

By Petter Gottschalk

This book introduces 'convenience' as the key concept to explain financial crime by white-collar criminals. Based on a number of fraud examination- reports from the United States and Norway, the book documents empirical evidence of convenience among white-collar criminals. It advances our understanding of white-collar crime by drawing attention to private investigation reports by fraud examiners and financial crime specialists, who are in the growing business of fraud investigations. Reports of investigations have never before been researched in terms of white-collar criminals nor crime convenience. Reports of investigations by auditing and law firms represent a valuable empirical basis – in addition to court documents and other sources of information about financial crime.

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 134p.

Edited by Nic Ryder

This edited collection provides an innovative and detailed analysis of the relationship between the financial crisis, risk and corruption. A large majority of the published research has concentrated on identifying the traditional factors that contributed towards the largest financial crisis since the Wall Street Crash and subsequent Great Depression. This original volume contests this, and provides the alternative view that white collar crime was also an underappreciated, and important factor.

Divided into five parts: bribery and corruption; financial crime; market manipulation; technology and white collar crime; and the financial crisis, and based on contributions by a wide range of experts in the field, this book will be of great interest to policy makers and practitioners, researchers and students alike.

London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 377p.

By Harald Haelterman

This book positions script analysis as a useful and pragmatic tool, which can guide the selection and implementation of preventive measures in business environments. It illustrates how the concept aligns with the crime-specific orientation found in environmental criminology, and particularly explores the theoretical foundations of situational crime prevention, the approach to which it is deemed most relevant and supportive.

The volume provides clear guidance on how to apply script analysis in daily practice, covering its main building blocks and key features. These are illustrated by a series of case studies into various crime types. Moving beyond the use of script analysis with the intent to disrupt the crime-commission process, the author further explores the wider benefits of the approach to both academics and practitioners. He identifies what is needed most if we want to embrace the full potential of script analysis for preventive purposes.

London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 262p.

By Johann van Loggerenberg

Warning. Smoking kills. It also corrupts law-enforcement officials and eviscerates state institutions. It devours politicians, professionals, business people and ordinary workers in the chase for big bucks and the battle for a slice of an ever-shrinking cigarette market. Join one of South Africa’s former tax sleuths Johann van Loggerenberg in a wild ride through the double-dealing world of tobacco’s colourful characters and ruthless corporates. Meet the femme fatales, mavericks, mercenaries and grandmasters, and learn how the crime-busting unit led by Van Loggerenberg at SARS and its ‘Project Honey Badger’ became a victim of a war between industry players and a high-stakes political game driven by state capture. This is the tale of a few good men and women who dared to try to hold to account a billion-dollar international industry rife with private spy networks, tax evasion, collusion and corruption – ultimately at great cost to themselves and South Africa.

Cape Town, South Africa: Tafelberg 2019. 272p.

By Clete Snell

The social acceptance of tobacco use obscures the fact that it is the single greatest preventable cause of death in the U.S., and approximately 80% of those who use tobacco products began using them before the age of 18. Indeed, tobacco companies in the past routinely targeted youth in their marketing and advertising, hoping to hook kids young and keep them with their original brand. Snell explores the tobacco industry's campaign to attract youth smokers and provides an overview of the FDA's investigation of the tobacco industry and how those investigations revealed the industry's deceptions and their specific intent to target youths….As a result of the Master Settlement with the tobacco industry, many states have developed comprehensive programs that have resulted in a substantial decline in youth tobacco use. While national efforts at tobacco regulation have largely failed, local tobacco control efforts have mostly been successful. Snell shows that the future of youth tobacco policy depends on the continued funding of tobacco prevention programs at the state and local level and illustrates that there is considerable evidence that the tobacco industry is shifting its marketing approach to minority populations and developing nations.

Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. 188p.

By E. LeGresley and E. Lindblom

Each year approximately 400 billion cigarettes, or one-third of all legally exported cigarettes, end up illegally smuggled across international borders. Cigarettes are the world’s most widely smuggled legal consumer product. Cigarette smuggling hurts the world’s nations by evading otherwise applicable duty fees and taxes. Even worse, it increases the number of smokers by providing a less-expensive supply of cigarettes, especially for the young and the poor. National efforts to restrict access to cigarettes by children can be undermined by the availability of cheap contraband cigarettes. In addition, cigarette smuggling that steals away public revenues leaves less funding available for public health efforts. At the same time, it reduces available revenues for health care and law enforcement. The major international cigarette companies say that the solution for the world’s governments is to reduce cigarette taxes and duty fees to reduce the incentives to smuggle. But an enormous, growing body of evidence shows that the major cigarette companies, themselves, have knowingly fostered and have consciously supported cigarette smuggling. In doing so, they have been able to penetrate otherwise closed markets, to increase the sales of their brands by making them available at lower prices, and to provide an argument against high or increased levels of cigarette taxes or import duties

Washington, DC: Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, 2002. 54p.

Edited by Gerben Bruinsma

In the past two decades, the study of transnational crime has developed from a subset of the study of organized crime to its own recognized field of study, covering distinct societal threats and requiring a particular approach. This volume provides examples of transnational crime, and places them in a broad historical context, which has so far been missing from this field of study. The contributions to this comprehensive volume explore the causes and historical precursors of six main types of transnational crime: piracy, human smuggling, arms trafficking, drug trafficking, art and antique trafficking and corporate crime. The historical contributions demonstrate that transnational crime is not a novel phenomenon of recent globalization and that, beyond organized crime groups, powerful individuals, governments and business corporations have been heavily involved.

New York: Springer, 2015. 201p.

Edited by Judith van Erp.

Corporate crimes seem endemic to modern society. Newspapers are filled on a daily basis with examples of financial manipulation, accounting fraud, food fraud, cartels, bribery, toxic spills and environmental harms, corporate human rights violations, insider trading, privacy violations, discrimination, corporate manslaughter or violence, and, recently, software manipulation. Clearly, the problem of corporate crime transcends the micro level of the individual ‘rotten apple’ (Ashforth et al. 2008; Monahan and Quinn 2006); although corporate crimes are ultimately committed by individual members of an organization, they have more structural roots, as the enabling and justifying organizational context in which they take place plays a defining role. Accounts of corporate fraud, misrepresentation, or deception that foreground individual offender’s motivations and characteristics, often fail to acknowledge that organizational decisions are more than the aggregation of individual choices and actions, and that organizations are more than simply the environment in which individual action takes place.

Basel: MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2018. 152p.

By Craig A. Zendzian.

Written by a former NYPD cop, this book gives a behind the scenes look at the hidden interests that lie behind casino gambling from Nevada to New Jersey. Provides a concise analysis of how politics, organized crime and special interests created one of the greatest gambling empires in the United States. CONTENTS: 1. Introduction, 2.Nevada and Earlier Gambling Movements in America, 3. The Bahamas and Casino Gambling, 4. Gambling Comes to New Jersey, 5. Let's Do Business: The Corporate Way That is, 6. Who Investigates Racketeers?, 7. Where Does It End?

NY. Harrow and Heston Publishers. 2012.

By Michael J. Lynch.

A revised and extended edition of the popular Crimes Against Health and Safety, this classic dissects the popular myths promoted by traditional criminology, uncovers who the real criminals are, and the extent of their dreadful crimes. The authors have written a new Introduction specially for this Kindle edition. CONTENTS: 1.Quiet Violence. 2.Corporate Crime: Definition and History. 3.Calling a Crime a Crime. 4.Conventional Laws for Unconventional Crimes. 5.Regulating Health and Safety. 6.Green Criminology: Corporate Violence and the Environment. 7.Explaining Corporate Violence. 9.Restructuring Risk Decision-making.References.

RECOMMENDED: If you're fed up with white collar crime, corporate arrogance and greed, then this book is for you. Makes a provocative text for upper division undergraduate courses on the Nature of Crime and its Control. Never fails to stimulate animated discussion in graduate classes.

NY. Harrow and Heston Publishers. 2014. 212p.