Financial crises and financial crime: ‘conscious coupling’ and ‘transformative understandings’ of crime past, present and future

Abstract

The global financial crisis has demonstrated the need for fundamental reform of the financial system. The underlying structure of the international financial and monetary system is being re-evaluated. The trope of 'transformation' in societal understandings of crime is premised on the causes-based theory that financial crime can be seen at the heart of the 'catastrophe' of 2007–08. It is from this increasing, and increasingly identifiable, 'financial crisis– financial crime' nexus that the hypothesis of a 'conscious coupling' of these conceptualisations is now being advanced. The term 'white-collar crime' is an example of how a technical and intellectually focused construct has crossed over into popular consciousness and become a 'public lexicon'. The current intellectual appetite for acknowledging Sutherland's continuing importance generally, specifically in the context of financial crime, the importance which Friedrichs attaches to Sutherland's work is manifest in the former's entreaty for transformations in 'collective consciousness' of financial crime.