Search Results (14)

Corporate crime is a widespread societal issue that causes significant physical, emotional, and financial harm. Despite its prevalence, research examining its effects from a public health perspective remains limited. This viewpoint paper, informed by a systematic review, examines the relationship between corporate crime and mental health, highlighting potential associations and methodological gaps. Evidence from OECD countries identified only two empirical studies, both conducted in Spain, both focusing on financial fraud, leaving other forms of corporate wrongdoing largely underexplored. The discussion is guided by a conceptual framework linking corporate financial violations to mental health outcomes, integrating stress theory, social determinants of health, and bidirectional pathways in which mental health may also influence corporate crime. The paper outlines a research agenda for public health researchers, addressing priority populations, study designs, measurement approaches, and policy implications. By bridging criminology and public health perspectives, this approach offers both theoretical insight and practical guidance for understanding and mitigating the mental health impacts of corporate crime. This framework constitutes the paper’s primary conceptual contribution by explicitly integrating criminological and public health perspectives into a multi-level and bidirectional model that has not been systematically articulated in prior literature. Rather than providing generalisable OECD-wide evidence, the paper highlights a substantial empirical gap within OECD settings and identifies key directions for future research. Full article

The production and sales figures for electric vehicles are showing a steady upward trend, clearly indicating the growing importance of sustainability goals. A unique historical situation has developed in the US: the owner of the leading electric car manufacturer (Tesla), Elon Musk, has taken an active role in political life. Amid a rising trend in electric vehicle (EV) adoption aligned with global sustainability goals, the political activism of Musk has provoked public backlash, including acts of vandalism and aggression toward Tesla vehicles. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the study explores (1) the psychological underpinnings of object-directed violence, (2) the legal classification of politically motivated vandalism, and (3) the broader market implications of corporate politicization. Our findings confirm that object-directed aggression stems from displaced frustration, especially when individuals feel politically powerless or morally outraged. Our analysis revealed that most Tesla-related vandalism will likely be prosecuted as property crimes. Although U.S. officials have labeled some acts as domestic terrorism or hate crimes, legal thresholds are generally not met. Our interdisciplinary model suggests that the politicization of Tesla has broader implications. Tesla’s symbolic status in the electric vehicle market means that attacks on it risk triggering a decline in public trust toward electric mobility. Full article

Data-driven strategies that leverage digital technologies for task improvement are increasingly being adopted across organizations. However, theoretical and empirical insights into how such strategies are implemented—and the organizational tensions they may generate—remain scarce. This study explores how a digital, data-driven strategy is interpreted and enacted within a complex organizational setting. We examine in a qualitative case study the Danish National Police’s digitalization strategy for a shift from reactive crime response to proactive crime prevention. Theoretically, the study is based on institutional theory, in particular, institutional logics (such as the state, corporation, and profession) that may underlie such new strategies. A qualitative case study was conducted drawing on document analysis, a review of key empirical studies, and additional interviews and meetings during strategy implementation (2013–2022). The findings reveal that the implementation process was shaped by divergent interpretations of the new data-driven strategy, rooted in institutional logics. The different interpretations surfaced underlying tensions about organizational priorities and practices. The theoretical novelty of the study is that we contribute to the concept of intra-institutional complexity, showing how conflicting interpretations of a single institutional logic—rather than clashes between distinct logics—can generate significant organizational friction. We identify three forms of such complexity: mission dilemmas, resource allocation challenges, and identity pressures. These findings advance the understanding of how digital strategies may unfold in practice and highlight the interpretive flexibility—and potential contestation—of institutional change within organizations. Full article

Gentrification and displacement of low-income and minority families is a frequently discussed phenomenon when it comes to community planning. To best address and redistribute resources for these neighborhoods, needs assessments are often conducted to identify the problem areas, such as crime, poverty, and abandoned infrastructure. Although needs assessments are a great starting point, they often neglect the hand of valuable community assets that should be preserved when engaging with gentrifying neighborhoods. To engage in these neighborhoods, researchers, governments, non-profits, and redevelopment corporations are more often turning to an asset-based community development approach (ABCD) pioneered by Kretzmann and McKnight (1993). This ABCD approach utilizes an asset mapping technique to identify and better understand the present strengths of a community. This was an approach taken by researchers to assist in the Salt Lake City’s (SLC) initiatives to document the city’s transformation and potentially preserve assets for their plan, called “Thriving in Place: A SLC Anti-displacement Strategy”. Asset mapping includes surveying and plotting resources both physical and non-physical, such as sustainable food sources, churches, schools, relationships, social networks, and individuals. The product of the asset map was an ArcGIS StoryMap—which is a GIS-based map that can be used for storytelling. Full article

This study aimed to clarify how local agriculture and social capital in disaster-affected areas were transformed by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 and to identify the factors that influenced the transformation of social capital—especially trust—after the disaster. A questionnaire survey was conducted in the Miyagi prefecture’s disaster-affected areas. Survey responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis with ordinary least squares; the trust index was used for explained variables and personal-attribute disaster-related variables as explanatory variables. The results indicate that regional agriculture was integrated into agricultural corporations or communal management as individual farmers were unable to recover their disaster-related losses. After the disaster, participation in collaborative efforts to manage community resources decreased, while participation in community activities, such as volunteering, increased. Respondents lost trust in the people around them owing to relocation after the disaster and exposure to crime. Steps necessary to maintain or improve social capital in disaster areas include maintaining public safety in the disaster area, securing sources of income, and providing people with interaction opportunities, such as hobby groups. The findings offer practical applications for post-disaster agricultural resource management in developed countries. Full article

Incarceration remains the foremost form of sentence for serious crimes in Western democracies. At the same time, the management of prisons and of the prison population has become a major real-world challenge, with growing concerns about overcrowding, the offenders’ well-being, and the failure of achieving the distal desideratum of reduced criminality, all of which have a moral dimension. In no small part motivated by these practical problems, the focus of the present article is on the ethical framework that we use in thinking about and administering criminal justice. I start with an analysis of imprisonment and its permissibility as a punitive tool of justice. In particular, I present a novel argument against punitive imprisonment, showing it to fall short in meeting two key criteria of just punishment, namely (i) that the appropriate individual is being punished, and (ii) that the punishment can be adequately moderated to reflect the seriousness of the crime. The principles I argue for and that the aforementioned analysis brings to the fore, rooted in the sentient experience, firstly of victims, and not only of victims but also of the offenders as well as the society at large, then lead me to elucidate the broader framework of jurisprudence that I then apply more widely. Hence, while rejecting punitive imprisonment, I use its identified shortcomings to argue for the reinstitution of forms of punishment that are, incongruently, presently not seen as permissible, such as corporal punishment and punishments dismissed on the basis of being seen as humiliating. I also present a novel view of capital punishment, which, in contradiction to its name, I reject for punitive aims, but which I argue is permissible on compassionate grounds. Full article

The Croatian legislators introduced the concept of criminal liability for legal entities already in 2003 with the adoption of the Law on Criminal Liability of Legal Entities. Influenced by the writing of esteemed domestic scholars, and inspired by French law, the legislators opted for a system linking the liability of corporations to the liability of the responsible person. There were very few cases in practice during the first years of its application, and the situation changed after the first prominent indictment of this type against the ruling political party for economic crimes. Since then, the legislation has been amended several times and a significant body of jurisprudence has developed. In the first part of this paper, I will describe the chronology of the development and formation of the Croatian legislative model of corporate criminal liability. The second part will analyze 31 available final court judgments, which will be the basis for the conclusion about the issues in the practical application of the legislative model and, more generally, the phenomenon of criminal offenses committed by legal entities in Croatia. Based on this analysis, I will indicate the potential deficiencies of such a concept. In the context of future development, special attention will be given to the problem of economic crimes committed by AI corporate systems. Full article

Legitimate companies are key facilitators of human trafficking. These corporate facilitators include not only websites providing advertisements for commercial sex services but also hotels and motels. Analysis of all active federal criminal sex trafficking cases in 2018 and 2019 reveals that in approximately 80% of these cases, victims were exploited at either hotels or motels. This paper studies the prevalence of the hospitality industry in the crime of sex trafficking and the failure of this industry to address this problem until recent civil suits were filed by victims against individual hotels and chains. Drawing on the civil cases filed in federal courts by victims of human trafficking between 2015 and 2021 along the East Coast of the United States, this paper assesses the characteristics of these hotels and the conditions in the hotels that facilitated sex trafficking. The paper then explores the moral and ethical problems posed by the facilitating role of hotel owners/operators in sex trafficking either through collusion or failure to act on and/or report evidence of individual abuse. Suggestions on how to address the problem are provided. Full article

The recent publishing of the Criminal Code Reform, known as the Corporate Governance Code and by which companies are prosecuted for the crimes they have committed, is contributing towards improving the management of companies involved in using natural resources. This study explores the disposition of environmental companies towards respect for nature in the context of the new Spanish Criminal Code 1/2015. Over 916 companies, including 104 environmental companies, have been asked about their knowledge of the code and the consequences it has for them through a survey. The paper explores the influence of regulatory compliance, coercive enforcement and cooperative actions on environmental companies to develop better attitudes towards nature. Partial Least Squares (PLS) Path Modelling was used to build an interaction model among variables. The results of the research reveal how environmental companies are more inclined to developing organizational standards (Cooperative Environmental Protocols) and to improving compliance with environmental law (coercive regulation). The model has a moderate predictive effect, explaining 54.1% of environmental companies’ Better Attitude towards Nature. The findings may have important implications for environmental authorities when deterring environmental crimes. Full article

There is widespread recognition that organizational culture matters in corporations involved in systemic crime and wrongdoing. However, we know far less about how to assess and alter toxic elements within a corporate culture. The present paper draws on management science, anthropology, sociology of law, criminology, and social psychology to explain what organizational culture is and how it can sustain illegal and harmful corporate behavior. Through analyzing the corporate cultures at BP, Volkswagen, and Wells Fargo, this paper demonstrates that organizational toxicity does not just exist when corporate norms are directly opposed to legal norms, but also when: (a) it condones, neutralizes, or enables rule breaking; (b) it disables and obstructs compliance; and (c) actual practices contrast expressed compliant values. The paper concludes that detoxing corporate culture requires more than changing leadership or incentive structures. In particular, it requires addressing the structures, values, and practices that enable violations and obstruct compliance within an organization, as well as moving away from a singular focus on liability management (i.e., assigning blame and punishment) to an approach that prioritizes promoting transparency, honesty, and a responsibility to initiate and sustain actual cultural change. Full article

This article analyses how the monies generated for, and from, corporate financial crimes are controlled, concealed, and converted through the use of organisational structures in the form of otherwise legitimate corporate entities and arrangements that serve as vehicles for the management of illicit finances. Unlike the illicit markets and associated ‘organised crime groups’ and ‘criminal enterprises’ that are the normal focus of money laundering studies, corporate financial crimes involve ostensibly legitimate businesses operating within licit, transnational markets. Within these scenarios, we see corporations as primary offenders, as agents, and as facilitators of the administration of illicit finances. In all cases, organisational structures provide opportunities for managing illicit finances that individuals alone cannot access, but which require some element of third-party collaboration. In this article, we draw on data generated from our Partnership for Conflict, Crime, and Security Research (PaCCS)-funded project on the misuse of corporate structures and entities to manage illicit finances to make a methodological and substantive addition to the literature in this area. We analyse two cases from our research—corporate bribery in international business and corporate tax fraud—before discussing three main findings: (1) the ostensible legitimacy created through abuse of otherwise lawful business arrangements; (2) the effective anonymity and insulation afforded through such misuse; and (3) the necessity for facilitation by third-party professionals operating within a stratified market. The analysis improves our understanding of how and why business offenders misuse what are otherwise legitimate business structures, arrangements, and practices in their criminal enterprise. Full article

This paper explores the central role of documentary filmmaking as a methodological practice in contemporary criminology. It draws from cultural criminology to develop emerging, open-ended practices for conducting ethnographically inflected audiovisual research that crafts sensory knowledge from aesthetic experience. First, it demonstrates how documentary criminology is an ethnographic practice that embraces audiovisual technologies to inflect, render, and depict the aesthetics of material, sensory, and corporeal experiences of crime and transgression as knowledge production. Second, it explores a particular type of lived experience that John Dewey terms “aesthetic” to demonstrate the sorts of tangible and intangible entities that documentary criminology can interpret, record and depict as knowledge. To demonstrate this approach, the article employs a variety of examples from cultural criminology and from the documentary Mardi Gras: Made in China. The final part of the paper turns to an analysis of Mardi Gras: Made in China itself to illustrate the overlap of theory, methods, and reflexive practices of documentary criminology within four broad aesthetic domains: temporality, topography, corporeality, and the personal. The inclusion of documentary within an open-ended methodological sensibility, both as a mode of analysis and as a means of producing sensory knowledge, can expand the criminological imagination. Full article

Internet Communication Technologies (ICTs) are making progress day by day, driven by the relentless need to utilize them for everything from leisure to business. This inevitable trend has dramatically changed contemporary digital behavior in all aspects. Undoubtedly, digital fingerprints will be at some point unwarily left on crime scenes creating digital information security incidents. On the other hand, corporates in the private sector or governments are on the edge of being exploited in terms of confidential digital information leakages. Some digital fingerprinting is volatile by its nature. Alternatively, once the power of computing devices is no longer sustainable, these digital traces could disappear forever. Due to the pervasive usage of Google Calendar and Safari browser among network communities, digital fingerprinting could be disclosed if forensics is carried out in a sound manner, which could be admitted in a court of law as probative evidences concerning certain cybercrime incidents. Full article