NCJ Number
194726
Journal
Crime and Delinquency Volume: 48 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2002 Pages: 263-282
Date Published
2002
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This article examines how the concept and theory of state-corporate crime developed in the criminological literature and how it is useful to examining many human rights violations that are not traditionally thought of as crimes.
Abstract
The authors of this article trace the origins of the concept of state-corporate crime through the criminological literature, beginning with the theories and research of Richard Quinney. The authors define state-corporate crime as criminal acts that occur when government agencies collude with institutions of economic production and distribution to produce an outcome that is beneficial to both entities. The article notes that the early origins of the concept "state-corporate crime," is grounded in Karl Marx's political economic writings, which Quinney developed into a version of Marxist criminology. The authors illustrate how theories of state-corporate crime are humanist in nature by recounting several case studies in which concern for individuals was overshadowed by desire for profit and ease of business practice. The Challenger disaster is discussed in this article as a crime, not as an accident. The explosion of the Challenger is described as the result of risky decision-making processes and unsafe actions by NASA, a government agency, and Morton Thiokol, Inc., a private corporation. The interests of the government agency and the corporation were placed above human safety concerns, directly resulting in the explosion that killed six astronauts and a school teacher. Several other case studies are offered by the authors to further illustrate how the theory of state-corporate crime may be used to describe criminal events that are not traditionally defined as crimes. The remainder of the article discusses how the theory of state-corporate crime evolved in the literature since its conception by Richard Quinney.