It's Legal but It Ain't Right: Harmful Social Consequences of Legal Industries (Evolving Values for a Capitalist World) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472068695 ISBN 13: 9780472068692

Verlag: University of Michigan Press, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Many U.S. corporations and the goods they produce negatively impact our society without breaking any laws. We are all too familiar with the tobacco industry's effect on public health and health care costs for smokers and nonsmokers, as well as the role of profit in the pharmaceutical industry's research priorities. It's Legal but It Ain't Right tackles these issues, plus the ethical ambiguities of legalized gambling, the firearms trade, the fast food industry, the pesticide industry, private security companies, and more. Aiming to identify industries and goods that undermine our societal values and to hold them accountable for their actions, this collection makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion of ethics in our time.

This accessible exploration of corporate legitimacy and crime will be important reading for advocates, journalists, students, and anyone interested in the dichotomy between law and legitimacy.

Nikos Passas is Professor in the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University.

Neva Goodwin is Co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nikos Passas is Professor in the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University.

Neva Goodwin is Co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University.

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It's Legal but It Ain't Right

Harmful Social Consequences of Legal Industries

The University of Michigan Press

Copyright © 2004University of Michigan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-06869-2

Contents

1 Introduction: A Crime by Any Other Name Nikos Passas and Neva Goodwin...........................................................12 The Cigarette Industry Richard A. Daynard.......................................................................................283 Externalities of the Arms Trade Loretta Bondi...................................................................................434 Firearms: Another Peculiar American Institution Tom Diaz........................................................................745 Leashing the "Dogs of War" Herbert Howe.........................................................................................1016 The Costs of Legalized Gambling: An Economic Approach John Warren Kindt.........................................................1157 The Licit and Illicit Trade in Antiquities Patty Gerstenblith...................................................................1388 The High Price of Cheap Food Mark Ritchie.......................................................................................1789 Accountability in the Pesticide Industry Peter Riggs and Megan Waples...........................................................19410 Titans of the Enron Economy: The Ten Habits of Highly Defective Corporations Scott Klinger and Holly Sklar.....................23011 Profiting through Influence: The Pharmaceutical and Lobbying Industries Ken Silverstein and Jess Taylor........................253List of Contributors..............................................................................................................277

Chapter One

Introduction

A Crime by Any Other Name

Nikos Passas and Neva Goodwin

Billions of U.S. dollars and enormous intellectual and human capital are spent annually fighting the "crime problem," which is essentially constructed as a "street crime problem." Students of white-collar crime and several nonprofit organizations have tried to call attention to "crimes in the suites," but these efforts have had limited impact on actual public policy (Clinard 1990). There is convincing evidence that corporate misdeeds victimize more people-even entire societies-than street offenders; nevertheless, public perceptions and policy priorities continue to support practices whereby "the rich get richer and the poor get prison" (Reiman 2000).

Recently, the threat of transnational organized crime (TOC) has become prominent in media, policy, and intelligence circles. Without any universally accepted definition of TOC, the emphasis is usually on misconduct perpetrated by stereotyped ethnic and marginal groups, while most authors neglect the interfaces between legal and illegal enterprises (Passas 1999b, 2003). For example, Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service (2000, 6) stated that an organized crime group meets the following criteria: "contains at least three people; criminal activity is prolonged or indefinite; criminals are motivated by profit or power; serious criminal offences are being committed." In principle, there is no reason why this definition would not apply to big corporations with established records of repeated felony convictions (e.g., General Electric). However, the groups that the intelligence service deems to represent threats are mostly Albanian, Turkish, African, Colombian, West Indian, and Asian ethnics, along with some "British Caucasians" and motorcycle gangs. So even when official agencies attempt to define the problem, some of the most serious and powerful offenders are in practice excluded.

Biases in criminal justice and other legal areas do not stop here. By concentrating on what is officially defined as illegal or criminal, an even more grave threat to society is left out. This threat emanates from corporate practices that are within the letter of the law but have serious adverse social consequences. Quite often the main reason why such practices remain legal and accepted by society is that industries mobilize financial and other resources to avoid stricter regulation. The point is most dramatically illustrated in recent revelations regarding the tobacco industry, one of several industries whose products, practices, or side effects are seriously at odds with the public interest. Additional examples may be found in the gambling industry, weapons producers, energy companies, private security firms, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology firms, offshore financial institutions, law firms, and antiquities traders, most of which will be discussed in this book.

This book is not about crime-not even white-collar and corporate crime. Readers interested more in such issues can turn to the relevant sociological and criminological literature (Braithwaite 1984, 1985; Calavita and Pontell 1993; Coleman 1987; Fisse and Braithwaite 1993; Levi 1995; Pearce and Tombs 1998; Ruggiero 1996; Shapiro 1990; Simpson 2002; Snider 1993; Stone 1975; Yeager 1995). The book is also not intended as a wholesale indictment of corporations in general. Rather, it is about how corporate power can be and does get abused. It is about the unhelpful and damaging influence corporations exert on law- and policymaking processes.

This book argues that we have set our priorities wrongly by overlooking misdeeds whose consequences are even more threatening than what is legally designated as crime. Unfortunately, instead of attempting to remedy this problem, we are moving in the opposite direction. Globalization creates situations that require ever more effective regulatory action and oversight, but part of the neoliberal agenda around the globe is to deregulate businesses and further reduce the role of the state. Not only does this have criminogenic consequences of its own (Passas 2000), but it also furthers certain types of misconduct that undermine democratic processes and sustainable economic growth.

The first section of this introductory chapter will outline some types of corporate practice that are entirely lawful yet are often more harmful than what is defined as crime. It would not be helpful to stretch the concepts of crime and criminality to cover these practices, yet their negative impact is so substantial that even fervent proponents of free market systems can see that these practices generate more harm than good for society overall. The immediate effects often fall on underprivileged people or countries, but in a broader way there is harm to global capitalism itself.

The second section will deal with a different kind of corporate misdeeds, where it is appropriate to apply a revised or newly focused definition of crime, following both the logic and spirit of criminal law. Many companies tread a very fine line, moving actions from one place where they would be criminal to another where they are not so defined yet continuing to make money in the places that would disallow these offshore activities. Globalization has greatly facilitated such "crimes without lawbreaking." This section of this chapter will suggest ways of reconsidering our notion of crime to encompass such situations.

Lawful but Awful

We are going to discuss a certain class of unintended, harmful side effects, things that happen because they produce benefits to some corporation and that are not stopped because the corporation in question is not where the bad...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Michigan Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0472068695
• ISBN 13: 9780472068692
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Herausgeber: Passas Nikos, Goodwin Neva R.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland