Taming business? Understanding effectiveness in the control of corporate and white-collar crime

Abstract

The harms generated by business activity are undeniable and their persistence, despite eff orts at their control, striking. Criminologists, amongst others, have documented the range of these harms 1 from financial (Snider 2007), to the deaths and injuries of workers (Tombs and Whyte 2007) and of the public (Hutter 2001), devastation of the environment (Beirne and South 2007), the abuse of market system ideals through insider trading (Polk and Weston 1990, cf. Bhidé 2009) and market manipulation (Punch 1996). The focus of this chapter is to analyse critically the possibilities ofcontrol and reduction of these harms by placing them in their economic and political context. It argues that contro..