When I was checking that calling this blog ‘business
behaving badly’ wasn’t an unintentional rip-off of any other regular
blog/journal/feature, I came across this interesting and broad ranging speech
by Christopher Craige, the Director of the CDPP in Australia. It covers many
interesting ideas, and is aimed at an audience who knows a thing or two about
law and/or crime, but not a huge deal about corporate crime. It is therefore
aiming at the same market as I am, and with the same name. I’m pretty sure he
won’t mind me using the title for a blog 4 years later.
I also hope he won’t mind me disagreeing with him on one
issue. He writes:
In the early 21st
century I suggest we can be far more robust in adopting a language that defends
and nurtures the free market system whilst saving it from its own excesses. The
continued currency of the term “white collar crime” is now unhelpful in this
task. Any lingering implication that there is a more benign variety of crime,
arising from genteel origins of some corporate perpetrators can surely now be
dismissed. Language of this kind is an impediment to retaining community
confidence that we have clear-eyed legislative, regulatory, prosecutorial and
judicial responses to what are in essence very serious and harmful crimes
committed by people in positions of trust and advantage. It is an aggravating
fact in a contemporary setting when such crimes are committed by people in the
course of occupying very high positions of authority in business.
To have a problem with the term white collar crime is not
unique. I didn’t want it in the title of my blog, but not for his reasons.
First, I would argue that the ‘lingering implications’ of
‘genteel’ or ‘benign’ crime are not all that strong. As the trend of developed
nations is to take firmer stances towards such behaviour, the umbrella name
must matter less. Relatedly, the words ‘white collar’ don’t need to mean
gentility.
In fact, the reason I disagree with Craigie is part of the
reason I didn’t want to use the term myself. It is vague and its parameters are
unclear. David Nelken[1]
devotes some time to working out what white collar crime might be. He shows
very clearly why the ‘original’ definition given in 1949 by Sutherland[2]
pretty hopeless. A crime committed by a ‘person of high status in the course of
his occupation’ tells us so very little about what might be going on – it could
be financial crime, competition law offences, manslaughter, or whatever. Some
scholars have included non-criminal behaviour in ‘white collar crime’
-Sutherland among them. The definition doesn’t help us decide whether any given
practice falls within the definition.
If then, the definition is vague, and we can’t apply it
easily, because it’s so nebulous, then I find it hard to believe there can be
much in the way of lingering connotation. Because it is at once definitive
sounding and nebulous in reality, I didn’t want it in the title of my blog. I
didn’t want to try and defend whatever I discussed as falling within its
‘meaning’. Instead, I’ve used my own (and Craigie’s!) title.
We could do away with the ‘white collar’ term, if we could
convince everyone to rip up lots of textbooks. I don’t think we really need to.
In all its cloudy fug, devoid of strict academic meaning, it does at least wave
us in the general direction of a group of offences. With time, what comes under
white collar crime may well crystallise. And it is useful to have a name or
label for a set of offences. The set that Craigie wants to refer us to is not
so easily caught within a definitional parameter like, say, sexual offences or
traffic offences. If we do away with ‘white collar’ crime (or ‘corporate crime’
– which arguably isn’t a great name either) then we are just left with ‘crime’,
which is more useless; or we have to think of a new name.
Given how hard it is
to define the contents of the rather flexible title ‘white collar crime’, one
runs the risk of naming something into definition. For example, something like
‘elite crimes’ looks like it rules out any struggling businessman, where ‘white
collar’ does not. Further, terms like ours (BBB) are equally nebulous. I only
used it because it was nebulous enough that I didn’t have to compare my
definition to anyone else’s!
And whatever we call it, who’s to say that
lingering genteel and benign connotations would be banished – in talking about
competition law it was once said it’s theft by men in nice suits[3].
If there is an element of gentility in these types of behaviours, we can’t oust it simply by using a
different name!
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