Examining The Crimes Of The Powerful Offenders Criminology Essay

Examining The Crimes Of The Powerful Offenders Criminology Essay Corporate crimes have 3 problems according to Muncie and McLaughlin, there is the problem of definition where if crime would to expand to cover corporate offences then the definition of crime itself could be totally different, Sunderland researched this by committing false advertising and food adulteration which were not covered by law at the time, he argued that they were just as serious as other crimes but was attacked by criminologists for researching acts which were not or should be crimes. secondly there is problem of social context which asks what is the relationship between white collar crimes and market forces/profit motive, and lastly is the problem of regulation which asks if corporate crime could be controlled by informal mechanisms or be enforced by criminal sanctions, many offences are not controlled by the police and instead of being punished the offender/offenders will be either forced to comply with regulations or be put in an educational program for advice, prosecution is a last resort, as Hazel Croall  [3]  points out A different language surrounds these regulatory offences (e.g.) regulation rather than policing, wrongdoing rather than crime and sanctions rather than punishment. The main problem of white collar crime is that although some involve what would be called typical crimes such as fraud and insider dealing, corporate crime can include breaches of health and safety which can endanger human lives, in this aspect; corporate entrepreneurs may be s ued for damages and subjected to various financial sanctions (and) are unlikely to face criminal prosecutions no matter how serious the consequences of their actions  [4]   This why white collar crime is on the margins of criminological inquiry, because most of the time they never actually break the law, the crime itself is almost always classed as an accident Even though Corporate crimes are more dangerous, expensive and violent than regular crimes i.e. theft, assault, murders etc. According to William J Chambliss in his book Power, Politics and Crime written in 2001, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S Congress estimated that $4 Billion was lost from street crimes while $200 billion was lost by corporate crime, 50 times more, although there is huge uncertainty in to white collar crime, the extent of the crimes have to be estimated, Levi  [5]  estimated in 1985 that fraud alone was worth  £2,133 million Another reason for corporate crime being in the margins is the separation of ownership of the company especially with a large amount of shareholders, it is almost impossible for one person to take control of a business dealings, with different levels of hierarchy, departments and regulating bodies, this can tempt corrupt executives to commit crime by offering big rewards with very little risk: large corporate crime i.e. crimes by large companies which effects many can affect many people such as employers, consumers, the environment etc., large scale criminal corporations I.e. fraud, money laundering etc., small scale criminal firms i.e. pretty crimes by small business such as dealers and tradesmen, occupational crime I.e. an employer committing crime, the important the employee the bigger the crime and finally other white collar crime which is individuals committing crime outside of the work place such as tax evasion. However as Croall points out, the attention seems to be on the off enders rather than the crime they commit, she asks How can the rather vague terms high status and respectable by defined and operationalized?are only some to be counted as white collar offenders?. These types of crimes have many characteristics: Offences are invisible, they are very hard to detect, this also makes them hard to be prosecuted , offenders are often legitimately present at the scene of the crime and mostly the victims are slow to realise wrongdoing has been caused, the crimes are carried out under the cover of a legitimate company; the crimes are very technical and complicated, many offenders may be involved and it is very hard to pinpoint who caused the offence; a diffusion of responsibility (in a large group, responsibility is not assigned) is rife in these cases, employees can blame employers for not preventing incidents and not setting regulations while the employers cab blame the employees for ignoring instructions etc.; also, victimisation can be diffused, in some cases there is no relationship between the offender and the victim i.e. an employers failure to check the safety of the safety of apparatus and causes and injury. All these categories result in the ambiguous criminal status  [6]  of white collar crimes. There are many problems in researching white collar crime, as Edwin Sunderland found out first hand, he could not publish the names of the companies in his studies in fear of being prosecuted himself for libel, there is the argument for this reason, it cannot be defined as crime seeing as criminologists cannot research it properly and efficiently. Statistics are very hard to find, seeing as most go undetected and do not fit legal offences, also victim surveys are almost non existent. As Croall points out, because there are so many offences hidden, it is very hard to get a sample of offenders for research, a large knowledge of the market and legal terms, the easiest way to conduct research is through individual case studies, investigative journalism, court observation and reports, cases reported in the mass media and interviews with enforcers. All the above is a huge contributing factor in why the crimes of the powerful are in the margins of criminological inquiry, if a criminologist cannot conduct and valid, reliable study then these types of crimes will always stay outside of criminological inquiry. However, as mentioned earlier, white collar crime is very diverse, and is, in many cases, extremely destructive and serious and should be in the centre of criminological inquiry. To begin with is offences against employees by employers, according to Muncie and McLaughlin, many employers will breach health and safety regulations for the employees just to meet deadlines and increase profits, 400 people a year in Britain die as a result of and accident in the workplace, in 1992 alone 28,000 people suffered serious accidents and 140,000 suffered minor ones. According to Croall two-thirds of fatal accidents involved some management violation of the Health and Safety at Work Act and three quarters were blamed on management, yet less than 40 per cent of workplace deaths resulted in prosecution This is a heft amount of deaths, and with such little amount of prosecutions, it does seems that business; can get away with wrongdoings. The main example for this is a string of disasters on oil rigs , in 1965 13 people died on the Sea Gem rig, followed by the Alexander Kielland rig which killed 123, yet lessons were never learnt from these and in 1988 168 people died aboard the Piper Alpha oil rig which was owned by Occidental Oil. It was put down to failure of safety regulations and their enforcement In November 1990 Lord Cullens criticised the safety features, after a civil action over insurance payments in 1997 two workers who had died were found to be negligent. Next is offences against consumers, these can range from fraudulent advertising to inferior design of products and defying regulations surrounding the products. The main example of this is the Zeebrugge disasters in 1987 involving the capsize of the ferry Herald of Free Enterprise which killed 154 passengers and 38 crew members. The owners P O Ferries international were blamed for not applying a safe operating system and for letting a deckhand fall asleep on the job. The families of those who suffered pressed the Director of Public Prosecutions to charge them with corporate manslaughter but it never happened. An investigation found that it was the companies fault for not giving clear instructions about safety procedures. After a second disaster involving the Estonia which killed 850 people, new safety measures were brought in 1997. New safety measures were finally brought into effect in 1999 following a second ferry disaster. The Estonia sank in 1994 with the loss of 850 lives. Offences against the public is a very serious category, with the huge rise in industrial development such as the use of coal, gas, oil and nuclear power, the risk of damage to the public and the environment has increased. The main example of this is the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal in 1984 where a huge gas leak in a chemical plant let to approximately 15,000 deaths although the government claim 3,787 deaths, this is considered to be the worst industrial disaster in the world and possibly the worst corporate crime to date. The company who owned it, Union Carbide, were blamed for poor design of the plant, its placement near a shanty town housing thousands of people, its faulty safety devices and its awful condition generally. Pearce and Tombs conclude that Union Carbide created or allowed to develop the conditions whereby and accident was possibleà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ (The company) had not taken the steps necessary to migrate the effects of the accident to this day thousands of families have not received compensation, in 1991, the Indian government charged the CEO of union Carbide Warren Anderson with manslaughter. He never faced trial and evaded an international arrest warrant while Union Carbide was charged with homicide, yet these charges never followed through. Another type of corporate crime is offences against other firms where one company will try to sabotage another company to maximise profits, and example of this is the case of Guinness takeover of Distillers in 1986. Guinness bid was contested by a bid from the Argyll group, to strengthen its bid, Guinness spent  £25 million on letting friends and associates by its own shares to increase its share price, they also bought a huge share in Distillers at an inflated price which it could honour its shareholders. The chief executive at the time Ernest Saunders and two other associates where found in breach of the Stock Exchange regulations and of criminal law and were prosecuted. Finally are offences against the state, this can include corporate tax invasion or bribery. An example is a scandal that the surrounded the sales of engineering equipment from the British company Matrix Churchill to Iraq that could have been used by Britain just before the Gulf war in 1990. Ministers secretly encouraged them to do so while they used official secrecy regulations to avoid being punished. These are all relevant examples to why criminology should focus more on white collar crime as a real crime, the examples given are huge crimes on a wide scale, they cannot compare to a petty theft at a newsagent, but there are worse cases, some companies main objective will be for crime, such as fraud, using the company as a disguise. The main example of this so-called mega fraud is the case of The Bank of Credit and Commerce international (BCCI) which was closed down in 1991 with  £10 billion worth of debts and 300,000 creditors world wide. The bank itself had very close links to Abu Dhabi. The bank would use the money deposited to estimate the stock markets and make loans to people, often fake, who lacked collateral to back them, and the losses were then concealed by taking out fake loans and raised $600 million. According to the media they were involved with tales of drug-money laundering, bankrolling of Middle East terrorists, underwriting of Saddam Husseins quest for a nuclear bomb, etc. Yet there is such thing as petty frauds, which can occur outside the work place and outside the big corporations, this can include the sale of defective goods and providing unsatisfactory services e.g. illegal street traders selling counterfeit DVDs. Another is occupational crime where an individual takes advantage of his/her position as an employer, the greater the responsibility borne by any particular employee, particularly in handling the money, the greater the scope of negligence or criminality (McLaughlin and Muncie 1996; 240). Finally is middle class crime where crime is committed outside of employment, notably tax evasion or insurance fraud conclusion, the main reason that white collar crime is on the margins of criminological inquiry is because society does not expect powerful respectable people to criminals, even though it occurs frequently the fact that it is so undetectable can make it hard for criminologists to even class it as a crime. The main reason this occurs is because of market forces and the desire for profit, something that does not affect average criminals. The difficulty of differentiating between the pursuit of legitimate commercial advantage and rule-breaking profiteering goes some way towards explaining the differential response of the authorities and public opinion towards white-collar and ordinary crime (McLaughlin and Muncie 1996;262) added to the trouble in regulating the crime and its inclination to use sanctions rather than punishment, white collar crime at present cannot be central in criminological inquiry, perhaps in the future the justice system will realise this, most probably after a big disaster has occurred.

What Made Non Violence Work

Gandhi and Mandela: What Made Non-Violence Work? Background Essay The history of violence in the world is well documented. However it is also possible to use non-violence to bring about change. This DBQ will look at two countries where a non-violent movement was successful. Historic Context India and South Africa were two important nations on two different continents. But although they looked strong on the outside, each one suffered from a disease that threatened the health of the whole. For India, the disease was colonization. For South Africa, it was racial segregation. Three ConditionsIn each of these nations three conditions help explain why non-violence worked. The first condition was that both of them had been colonies of England. And like England both countries thought law was very powerful – more powerful even than government officials. The second condition was the presence of violence. Without the possibility of a violent revolution, the government might not have been willing to change. The third condition was the presence of a leader – Mohandas Gandhi in India and Nelson Mandela South Africa. Each of these men was so charismatic he could lead his followers to a non-violent victory.Both of them gave their lives to the cause. Gandhi was shot by an assassin while Mandela spent almost twenty-seven years of his life in prison. These are their stories. Mohandas Gandhi – â€Å"An eye-for-an-eye only makes the whole world blind† Mohandas Gandhi was born in 1869, in Porbandar, India. His father taught his son respect for all religions. His mother taught him that all living things are holy. Following custom, Gandhi married at age 13; his wife, Kasturbai, was even younger. At age 19 he went to London to study law, and at age 22 Gandhi completed his studies.He now felt more than ever that the English, who had ruled India for almost two centuries, were law-abiding and fair. Hopes high, he sailed for home. Gandhi tried to set up a law pr actice in India but was so shy he failed miserably. When someone suggested he try his luck in South Africa, he jumped at the offer. But no sooner had he arrived there than he was thrown off a train, just for being a â€Å"colored† man holding a first class ticket! Even for a shy man, it was too great an insult. When he fought back he was sent to jail. It was there he became a leader, bringing about important changes for South Africa’s Indian community.When Gandhi returned to India, he was paraded around like a hero because of his South African victories. But everywhere he looked he was horrified by the poverty he saw. He saw, too, that to be successful in the world the English had built. Indians had to imitate their rulers – their clothes, their manners, and their standards of beauty. Gandhi refused! Gandhi wanted people to live free of all kinds of snobbery, even the ones imposed by India’s ancient caste system. The first thing he did was to build a diff erent kind of community where he could model this classless society.He dressed in the clothes a poor man would wear and did chores an untouchable [people so low they are below caste] would do. Most Indians thought he was absurd. But slowly his strange ideas were accepted until Gandhi came to be known as ‘Mahatma’ or ‘Great Soul. ’ Gandhi saw that India’s self-respect was tied to independence. But England was a giant with colonies all around the globe. And Indian politicians had worked for independence for at least half a century. How much harder would it be for the gentle Gandhi? Yet in the end Gandhi succeeded. The question is how?Nelson Mandela – â€Å"People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can also be taught to love. † Rolihlahla Mandela was born in 1918 in a tiny village in South Africa. He was still a baby when his father, a tribal chief, was dethroned for disrespecting an English judge. At age seven he was sent to a boarding school where he learned to live under apartheid, a Dutch South African word meaning â€Å"racial apartness. † There he was given the name â€Å"Nelson† because his African name, which could sometimes be translated as â€Å"Troublemaker,† wasn’t European.This was the first time, though not the last, that Mandela felt disrespected for his blackness. In the 1930’s it was rare for a black South African to attend college. But Mandela not only attended, he graduated, got a degree from law school, and set up a practice in Johannesburg which he hoped could support his small family. Yet apartheid was always a humiliation to him. When the Afrikaner, or Dutch South African, Nationalists came to power in the 1948 election, the segregation habits of the past three hundred years became law. Hoping for a brighter future, Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) and became its first Youth Leader.In the 1960s, many of the colonial natio ns of Africa were gaining independence. The ANC was encouraged and campaigned for democracy in South Africa. They were mild campaigns at first, but as the government became more hostile, so did ANC protests. In November 1961, a military branch of the party was organized with Mandela as its head. It authorized the limited use of arms and sabotage against the government, which got the government’s attention—and its anger! Mandela went into hiding in 1964, he was captured, tried, and sentenced to life imprisonment. It was a sad day for black South Africa.As days stretched to months, months to years, and years to decade, Mandela lived most of them at brutal Robben Island Prison. There his guards did their best to break his spirit with isolation and abuse. Remarkably he kept his hope and dignity alive. Then, twenty-six and half long years after his imprisonment began, he was released. Again, Mandela could tackle the job of dismantling apartheid. He hoped, like the Afrikaner government that freed him that he could keep South Africa from erupting into civil war. The Question Gandhi and Mandela were sitting on powder kegs built on hate and injustice.The people in each society knew the powder kegs existed. More importantly their governments knew they existed. Yet both men were able to bring about non-violent change. Gandhi brought independence to India and Mandela brought democracy to South Africa. So how did they do it? The presence of violence, the respect for law, the leadership of a charismatic individual—these 3 ingredients were important, but not the whole story. Now examine the documents that follow, looking for further ways that non-violent change was achieved in India and South Africa. Again the question: Gandhi and Mandela: What made non-violence work?

Music is Education

Music in education is essential to our children because it increases their listening skills and is a common method of communication for cultures worldwide. There are schools attempting to eliminate teaching musical arts to our children. The board of education claims they must provide education by concentrating on the basic academic courses, but what they don't realize is that music is a major part of basic education. We must not allow them to pull the teaching of music out of our school curriculums because music is an essential form of communication. Our children do not have to be fluent in the arts to receive the value of broad exposure to the different musical dialogues. Deprivation of a very valuable part of education occurs if we do not teach them to appreciate a wide variety of music. Metaphorically speaking, we often associate the terms language and grammar with the term music. This association leads us to believe that music is a form of language, possibly because no symbol system other than language has the same potential as music of infinite productivity and precision. It takes a multitude of directions and phonetic-type symbolism to produce a pleasant sounding musical composition. This relates very closely to the requirements of everyday language. The primary objective of any spoken language is to convey a person's thoughts in a comprehensible fashion, but we must remember that everyone thinks and comprehends everything differently. Musical language contains vast quantities of words to help people understand how original composers intended to play a specific piece. Musical language also has directions that allow and encourage some scope of original interpretation and minor departures from the written score, resulting in no two performances sounding exactly alike. The English language, as we know it, carries a very strong parallel to these same interpretable words. Dialect and slang are just two of the many connotative forms to speak different languages. All languages contain these variations and reinforce the need for striving toward understanding a basically generic language. It would be very difficult to speak to a non-English speaking person and clearly convey a message unless both persons were familiar with basic terminology. It would be just as unlikely to communicate a musical message to someone not educated or interested in musical interpretation. The term music in itself has many different connotations. One in the United States may not have the same perceptions as one whose origin is France or Australia, or elsewhere in the world. In my travels through Europe and South America I had a hard time finding any truly original, locally produced music. The majority of the music I searched through were also popular in the United States. It was very easy to find foreigners singing an American song using their interpretation of our language. The entire world seems to be able to communicate with music and seems to understand it enough to share their own musical interpretation. Music is a language of it's own and depending on how we speak it, it too can accomplish a multitude of results. People are no more able to understand a foreign language without education than they are to understand the unspoken language of music without proper musical education. A single score of music interpreted with a few of many available musical directions can tell as many stories as there are variations. For example, playing Cristofori's Dream by David Lanz entirely lento-pianisimo (slow and very soft), creates a very peaceful and tranquil mood. Played again allegro-forte (lively, brisk, and loud), emits an uplifting feeling. Yet, by using both interpretations progressively and regressively within this identical musical score, one could feel depleted and elated in the same timeframe. This is perhaps the most ascribable reason to pursue aknowledge of musical semantics. Within music one expresses many emotions, speaks many languages, conveys complex messages, and tells many stories. Music can be a selfish form of conversation and it is not always necessary to have a recipient to onvey a message. One has only to listen while playing music to communicate with themselves, yet most would suspect the stability of a person who attempted this scenario by simply talking and responding while alone. Music merges the physical aspects of harmony with a sublime and metaphysical effect creating an inner peace. Seldom will words alone be capable of accomplishing what just one musical composition can communicate when we teach our children to appreciate music. With all available forms of communication, one should never forget that listening carefully to music–as we should listen to others speak–can clarify the true meanings of all languages. We should all strive to include intuition and intellect into language of any form. Intellect enlarges our range of instincts through newly absorbed information and enables us to reflect and analyze all forms of language. If communication is the purpose for language, we must then realize that speech is not the only form of communication, for life without smiles, hugs, sign language, and even music would be very unfulfilling. We must continue to educate our children in the musical arts and teach them yet another form of communication.

Dark Sides of the Mass Media - 752 Words

Media is the most powerful weapon in the world. It can make common people popular in one day, it can make an innocent person be convicted in the court of public opinion by mistake, or it can damage both the reputations and personal lives of successful people. How much and how often should the public know about personal lives of people? Is it important for mass media to carefully consider what â€Å"the right to privacy† means? Are journalists aware of the fact that they sometimes make the whole situations worse while intending to satisfy the public`s endless hunger for daily coverage of the news? Mass media`s unnecessary and constant focus on people`s lives are very bad for two main reasons. Firstly, intense attention of media can cause a lot of damage to people. For instance, â€Å"Trash or Journalism† - a program on Sensational TV describes the moment when Oliver W.Sipple deflected a gun directed at President Ford. 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