State-corporate Crime Research Articles

State-corporate legal symbiosis and social harm: the case of the steel factory ‘Ilva’ in Taranto, Italy

AbstractFor more than a decade, epidemiological surveys have shown that Taranto, Italy, has a critical health situation. In particular, two epidemiological reports have established a causal link between mortality and morbidity in Taranto and the industrial production of Ilva, one of Europe’s largest steel mills. Despite its negative impact on local health, Ilva has been allowed to produce thanks to a favorable legal framework. In particular, this article focuses on seven years central to the recent history of Ilva (2011–2017), in which the state has engaged in frenetic and compulsive lawmaking aimed to establish a favorable legal environment for Ilva to continue producing. It shows how the law has become an avenue for the Italian state and Ilva to establish a symbiotic relationship that has created the conditions to produce and reproduce harmful corporate practices. These laws are presented in juxtaposition with academic research and epidemiological surveys on Taranto’s public health, thus showing how the Italian state has responded to the increasing amount of evidence of corporate harm done in Taranto. The article contributes to the criminological scholarship on state-corporate crime and social harm by discussing the role of state law in the production and reproduction of harmful corporate practice. It also advances the literature on the Ilva case with a novel socio-legal reading of the socioenvironmental conflict ongoing in Taranto.

State-corporate crimes and human rights violations: an essay on the symbiotic relationship between states and corporations

Resumo Nesse ensaio buscamos ampliar a compreensão dos crimes estatais-corporativos que violam direitos humanos por meio de uma aproximação da literatura do crime-estatal corporativo com campo dos estudos organizacionais. Argumentamos que crimes corporativos violadores de direitos humanos são (re)produzidos com a participação do Estado, em função das lacunas de governança estabelecidas pela globalização, criando uma relação simbiótica que potencializa a normalização de tais infrações. Nossa argumentação é a de que tal problema resulta de uma articulação deliberadamente organizada e constituída, historicamente, por meio de relações de poder, que visam garantir uma ordem social centrada na manutenção dos interesses capitalistas, modo de produção em que vida, morte e violência são normalizadas.

Crimes estatais-corporativos e violações de direitos humanos: um ensaio sobre a relação simbiótica entre Estados e corporações

Abstract In this essay, we seek to expand the understanding of state-corporate crimes that violate human rights by approximating the literature on state-corporate crime with the field of organizational studies. We argue that corporate crimes that violate human rights are produced and reproduced with the state’s participation in the governance gaps established by globalization in a symbiotic relationship that enhances their normalization. Our argument advances toward unveiling the problem as a configuration resulting from a deliberately organized and historically constituted articulation based on power relations, which aims to guarantee a social order centered on maintaining capitalist interests in which the exploration of life, death, and violence are normalized.

State-Business Relations and Arenas as a Legitimate Space for State-Corporate Crimes: The Case of Modern Slavery in Brazil

This article aims to explore the genesis of arenas as an interorganizational relation space that can promote, or at least cleave, the path for corporate crimes. Based the scenario in which Brazil eradicated slavery, we argue there has been the creation of dynamic arenas and counter-arenas as spaces for avoiding or promoting corporate crimes, while the state has played the role of facilitator in such crimes. This paper asserts that promotion and prevention of corporate crimes are both legitimate actions by the state in its regime of permission, and every single actor who play in this field through arenas. In order to map the key elements of these arenas, our investigation is based on the techniques of shadowing, in-depth interviews, and field observation. After building our data pool, we analysed the phenomena mostly through open, axial, and selective coding, based on the Grounded Theory approach as a mean for categorization.

Corruption and Public Procurement in Health Sector: The Challenges of Pandemic Era in Greece

The health sector in Greece is considered as one of the most vulnerable sectors with high levels of corruption and appears to be particularly problematic in the provision of health services and in medical supplies procurement processes carried out by public hospitals. Viewed from a systemic-structural perspective, corruption is examined as a phenomenon emerging from the interactions and interconnections between the organized structures of venture capital and the state apparatus. This paper argues that the COVID-19 crisis has produced a breeding ground for potential corruption practices and seem to intensify the unlawful practices especially in procurement processes. The state of exception and the implementation of emergency measures manufacture the conditions that permit the lack of transparency in the transactions between the health care system and the pharmaceutical industry. Applying an integrated theoretical model of state-corporate crime and critical health criminology and drawing on empirical qualitative research, this paper highlights the procurement corruption risks in the health sector during the pandemic era.

Corruption as state -corporate crime: the example of the health sector in Greece

The study analyses the relations and processes underpinning grand corruption in the health sector in Greece. Viewed from a systemic-structural perspective, corruption is examined as a phenomenon emerging from the interactions and interconnections between the organized structures of venture capital and the state apparatus. Applying an integrated theoretical model of state-corporate crime and drawing on extensive empirical qualitative research, this paper traces the processes of normalization and institutionalization of corruption within the context of social networks and organizations. It is argued that corruption is not a deviant response to a normal system but a normal response to a system fostering illicit practice in accordance with capitalist ethos, profiteering, and the distribution of economic resources. In this wide political economy context, existing power relations and structures within the health sector are being reproduced.

Regulatory Failure as State-Corporate Crime in the Indian Health Sector

Regulatory Failure as State-Corporate Crime in the Indian Health Sector

“We will give our blood, but not our land!”—Repertoires of resistance and state-organized land-grabbing at a Bangladeshi tea plantation

Land-grabbing is an international issue closely associated with conflict and violence, as communities confront, through prolonged struggles, powerful elite networks involved in the illicit transformation of space. Resistance to land confiscations can be a life-and-death struggle especially for poor rural and urban communities whose livelihoods are tied to the targeted land. Because these struggles are often marked by corruption, state violence, and the persecution of already marginalized populations, they have become an area of emerging interest for state crime and state-corporate crime scholars. However, there is only introductory data mapping how communities resist land-grabs engineered through illegitimate state-corporate activity. Against this backdrop the following paper analyses a case of community resistance to land-grabs in Bangladesh using a contentious politics framework and the concept of land-laundering. The structure and activity of this resistance has been mapped through interviews with stakeholders involved in this struggle, complemented by documentary research.

Regimes of Extreme Permission in Southeast Asia: Theorizing State-Corporate Crime in the Global South

AbstractCorporations’ profit-making objectives are a central force guiding development strategies in the Global South but contradictorily can be blamed for a range of social and environmental harms. This article brings a state-corporate crime lens to bear on the economic and political processes that shape Global South-located commodity production. It seeks to understand the functioning of neo-imperialist profiteering through elaborating the concept of regimes of extreme permission, described as modalities of ‘intense’ accumulation, defined by weaker or unstable forms of hegemony consolidation, illegal/illicit practices, state-sanctioned violence and various socio-environmental degradations. Through analyses of two regimes of extreme permission in the SE Asian context—Indonesian palm oil plantations and Export Processing Zones for garment production in the Greater Mekong Subregion—the paper describes the role of states and corporations in constructing the repressive socio-political space required for neo-colonial corporate accumulation. We contribute to ‘Southernizing’ criminology by re-articulating state-corporate crime theory within imperialist contexts. It also shows that neo-colonialism can be understood as the de-regulation of corporate accumulation.

A case study of state-corporate crime: Crown Resorts

ABSTRACT The concept of state-corporate crime has emerged in criminological discourse to explain the nexus of political and economic decision-making by states and corporations, and the ways this cooperation can have socially injurious impacts (Michalowski, R. J., & Kramer, R. C. [2006]. The critique of power. In R. J. Michalowski & R. C. Kramer (Eds.), State-corporate crime. New Brunswick: Rutgers, p. 15). This ‘cooperation’ can include corporations engaging in illegality with the tacit approval of state organisations, states failing to prevent crime, and even states colluding with corporate illegality. In this article, we use state-corporate crime theory to situate the recent wrongdoing at Crown Resorts (henceforth ‘Crown’). We explain how this wrongdoing emerged within a politico-economic environment of neo-liberalism, particularly through the recent deregulation of casinos in New South Wales (NSW). We argue that the organisational decisions within Crown that breached laws and caused harms are best understood as a case of state-corporate crime.

Privatisation and accountability in Australian immigration detention: A case of state-corporate symbiosis

Across the global north, immigration detention has become an increasingly common punishment for ‘illegal’ movement between borders. The punitive nature of Australia's border protection laws is enhanced by a privatised and offshored model of operation, drawing in corporations and neighbouring territories to sustain a policy of indefinite, offshore detention. Reading these arrangements as resulting in actions that might be described as state-corporate crime, this article considers how such punitive regimes are sustained by the institutional actors who operationalise them. It analyses documents tabled before the Australian Senate in 2019 which detail the contractual relationship between the Department of Home Affairs and private security provider Paladin. Communications materials in particular, including emails and meeting minutes, reveal a compromised framework of accountability that failed to apprehend underlying forms of harm in offshore detention, therefore sustaining its capacity to punish. The results also suggest a shared interest between government and Paladin in maintaining this compromised framework, and an absence of voices which might challenge it. Noting that public-private contracts are commonplace in contemporary punitive regimes, the article concludes by interrogating the place for human rights compliance within these regimes.

Coal Criminals: Crimes of the Powerful, Extractivism and Historical Harm in the Global South

AbstractThis article provides a criminological analysis of the extraction, consumption, and disposal of coal in the Caribbean and the global south. It looks at how the transnational corporation Applied Energy System (AES) and its 454-megawatt coal-fired electric power plant in Puerto Rico has manufactured a transnational network of environmental harm and violence. The paper aims to demonstrate how coloniality, law, and state-corporate deviance enable the coal sector- a habitual environmental offender- to engage in systemic harm across different jurisdictions and states of the global south. To do so, we engage with the work of scholars in the green criminology (treadmill of production), state-corporate crimes (crimes of development), and crimes of the powerful (Ecocide and Carbon Criminal) traditions. Furthermore, this article briefly describes the stories of resistance taking place in Puerto Rico. In doing so, the article describes the criminogenic practices behind this fossil fuel industry, and how it has taken advantage of colonial practices, thus enhancing the historical harm manufactured by modernity and replicated within the neoliberal economy.

Farming Intensification in Northern Ireland – A State-Corporate Environmental Harm?

Food production may involve serious harms that lie beyond traditional definitions of crime and are not statutorily proscribed. One example of a criminologically under-researched source of harms is intensive farming. Taking a case study of rising intensive pig farming in Northern Ireland, this paper innovatively applies the state-corporate crime framework to analyse the catalysts for environmental and social harm in the country, expanding the knowledge of complex relationships between political and economic actors from a green criminological perspective and further advancing the agenda of ‘greening’ of state-corporate crime (Bradshaw, 2014). It concludes that a state-corporate symbiosis supports and reinforces a market-oriented, profit-driven model of farming that prioritises efficiency and ultimately leads to ‘lawful but awful’ intensification.

Power(ful) Connections: Exploring the Revolving Doors Phenomenon as a Form of State-Corporate Crime

Power(ful) Connections: Exploring the Revolving Doors Phenomenon as a Form of State-Corporate Crime

Power(ful) Connections: Exploring the Revolving Doors Phenomenon as a Form of State-Corporate Crime

The ‘revolving doors’ phenomenon is the name given to the movement of individuals from public office to private companies and vice versa. It is believed that this phenomenon impacts the decision-making process to the detriment of the public interest. While it has largely been framed as a corrupt practice, this research seeks to explore it as a form of state-corporate crime by employing the case study of the Spanish government and the fossil fuel industry. The study finds that the explored case of revolving doors causes harm by driving social and economic instability and climate inaction and proposes the creation of a 'state-capture corporate crime'. Overall, the paper highlights the need to broaden the revolving doors and state-corporate crime concepts to allow its inclusion in the criminological agenda.

Book Review: Natural Resources, Extraction and Indigenous Rights in Latin America: Exploring the Boundaries of Environmental and State-Corporate Crime in Bolivia, Peru and Mexico

Book Review: Natural Resources, Extraction and Indigenous Rights in Latin America: Exploring the Boundaries of Environmental and State-Corporate Crime in Bolivia, Peru and Mexico

A Smorgasbord of Normalizing State-Corporate Crime with a Touch of Corruption and Fraud for Good Measure

A Smorgasbord of Normalizing State-Corporate Crime with a Touch of Corruption and Fraud for Good Measure

The Gambling Act 2005 and the (De)regulation of Commercial Gambling in Britain: A State-Corporate Harm

This article explores the forms of harmful practices and harms experienced by individuals since the implementation of the Gambling Act 2005. Employing the state-corporate crime paradigm as an analytical lens through which to examine the narratives of individuals who gamble and affected family members, and supporting secondary sources, it illustrates the ‘collateral damage’ that has resulted from an industry that embeds harmful practices as a means of capital accumulation. By providing insight into the often-hidden array of economic, physical, emotional, and psychological, and cultural harms that result from the entrenchment of a leisure culture that institutes ever more potent forms of aleatory consumption, the article offers a rare sociological critique of an industry that has been able to flourish as a consequence of an alliance between state and business.

Campaign Contributions as Crime: The Case of Contribution Influence on US Economic and Environmental Policy

Although the current campaign finance system in the US allows private donations to campaigns, an increasing body of evidence suggests that these contributions influence policy and could potentially lead to social injury. This leads to an important question: Do campaign contributions constitute crime? The present article takes up this question. After an overview of the famous debate between Tappan and Sutherland on the role of social injury in determining whether something is a crime—and a concise summary of different types of political crime (e.g. corruption, bribery, state crime, and state-corporate crime)—an analysis is conducted to assess the connection, if any, between campaign contributions and two types of social injury: economic harm/inequality and environmental harm. Findings from the analysis show that campaign contributions can, indeed, cause social injury. It is therefore concluded that campaign contributions sometimes constitute crime under Sutherland’s framework. Numerous campaign finance reform options are discussed—all with the intent of limiting the social injury created by campaign contributions.

Pedagogy of the implicated: advancing a social ecology of responsibility framework to promote deeper understanding of the climate crisis

ABSTRACT This paper draws on Deborah Britzman’s conceptualisation of ‘difficult knowledge’ and Michael Rothberg’s figure of ‘the implicated subject’ to advance a Social Ecology of Responsibility Framework (SERF) in relation to the climate crisis.This framework demonstrates the impossibility of disarticulating individual, private actions that contribute to the ecological crisis from state-corporate climate-related harms. While not discounting differences of scale between individual actions and state-corporate crimes, the article highlights difficulties with binaristic approaches to climate responsibility which privilege either personal actions or macro-level norms, practices and ideologies. Foregrounding self-implication, the model serves as a basis for establishing transnational and transgenerational solidarity with human and other-than-human lifeforms who inhabit the Earth. The paper concludes with some examples of visual images and accompanying activities that can be used to prompt critical reflection on one’s own positioning as an implicated subject and as a change agent who can contribute to the amelioration of global warming