Controlling State Crime by Jeffrey Ian Ross

Author:Jeffrey Ian Ross [Ross, Jeffrey Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History & Theory, Criminology, Social Science, Political Science, American Government, State
ISBN: 9780765806956
Google: uZvfngEACAAJ
Goodreads: 3512277
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1995-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

State-Corporate Crime

State-corporate crime is a more recent type of crime that is allowed, tolerated, and abetted by the state. State-corporate crime has been defined specifically as “illegal or socially injurious actions that result from a mutually reinforcing interaction between (1) policies and/or practices in pursuit of the goals of one or more institutions of political governance and (2) policies and/or practices in pursuit of the goals of one or more institutions of economic production and distribution” (Aulette and Michalowski, 1993: 175). State-corporate crime, a recent concept in further understanding upperworld crime, occurs when the state and its agencies, working in conjunction with capitalist production, either commit actions that result in social harm or fail to act in ways that would prevent socially injurious actions. First applied to the explosion of the U.S. space shuttle Challenger (Kramer, 1992), the concept is used here to explain further state actions that may be criminal or simply socially harmful, yet perhaps not defined as criminal. The state’s complicitous role in state-corporate transgressions is especially pertinent as we consider acts of both commission and omission against workers (Friedrichs, this volume).

The explosion of the space shuttle Challenger technically resulted from faulty seals; however, the social causes are situated in the “hurry up” agenda of the National Aeronautic Space Administration (NASA) and the management of Morton Thiokol, the private producer of the seals. Although corporate engineers voiced misgivings over the scheduled flight of the shuttle, their concerns were overridden by both NASA and Morton Thiokol management—both desiring a series of space shuttle flights, as had been proposed by former President Richard Nixon and vehemently supported by then-President Ronald Reagan. The fatal consequences were the result of both private producers and state managers whose concerns for production, flight schedules, and a financially self-sufficient space shuttle program overshadowed those for human life (Kramer, 1992).

In September 1991, the U.S. public again was shocked by another state-corporate crime that directly victimized workers —the Imperial chicken processing plant fire in Hamlet, North Carolina. This case is yet another recent example of the state’s failure to protect workers’ safety while at the same time allowing businesses to increasingly accumulate wealth. In fact, North Carolina’s history of regulatory failure by state and federal agencies contributed to the tragedy in Hamlet. North Carolina failed to fund (and to use available federal funds for) its own state Occupational Safety and Health Program—a program designed to protect workers’ safety while on the job. Federal funding for its own OSHA program had decreased in the probusiness, antilabor political climate of the 1980s in America. North Carolina had promoted a social climate friendly to business and hostile to labor and corporate regulation. The state has its own right-to-work laws, which dilutes what little power organized labor holds there. The workers at Imperial were not unionized and likely would have remained that way. Furthermore, the majority were poor women, many of whom were single mothers working at slightly more than minimum wage (Shanker, 1992).

Regulatory inspectors knew that Imperial kept fire exit doors locked in order to prevent workers from stealing chicken parts.

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