Victims of corporate crime

Abstract

Whether in the form of being exposed to illegal pollution, being ripped off by goods that have been sold at illegally inflated prices, being made ill by sub-standard or out-of-date food, or having our pensions stolen, the illegalactivity of private corporations1 has a major impact upon our lives. It is no longer controversial in criminology to assert that the social and economic costs of corporate crime tend to exceed the corresponding costs of other forms of crime. Corporate crime injures and kills many times more people than interpersonal violence (Box 1983; Slapper and Tombs 1999; Whyte 2004). Researchers in the US have estimated that the total economic cost of corporate crime is perhaps as much as 20 times the cost of ‘mainstream’ crime (Albanese 1995; Friedrichs 1996). Although we are very often unaware of being victimised, the sheer magnitude and encroachment of offending by business into our everyday lives means that everyone reading this chapter is likely to have been victimised many times over by corporate crime.

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