Table Of Content“Barak constructs a grand narrative which attests to the pervasiveness of corporate
crime, the state routinization of the crimes of the powerful, and the unsustainability of
multinationalcapitalism.Traversingtheglobe,andincorporatingfinancial,health,safety
and environmental crimes, financialization and the commodification of the commons,
thisempiricallyandhistoricallyrich,theoreticallysophisticatedtourdeforceatthesame
time holds out the promise of effective challenge to unchecked corporate power.”
Steve Tombs, Professor and Head of the Department of Social Policy and
Criminology and Co-Director of the International Centre for Comparative
Criminological Research, Open University, UK
“Gregg Barak advances a chastening indictment of contemporary capitalism. Both
liberal capitalism and the growing strength of authoritarian capitalism in societies like
China afflict profound domination upon citizens. Gregg Barak enriches the conversa-
tion about options for strategic regulation and strategic socialist innovation to temper if
not tame their power.”
John Braithwaite, Distinguished Professor, RegNet School of Regulation and Global
Governance, Australian National University, Australia
“Unchecked Corporate Power is a thoughtful and thought-provoking examination of
contemporary corporate harms, how economic, political, and media elites have made
them appear to be the unavoidable collateral damage of honorable profit-seeking, and
how the regulatory system tasked with controlling these harms has not only turned
them into non-crimes, but has often facilitated their perpetration. More than a critique
of corporate harms, Unchecked Corporate Power offers both a call and a model for fun-
damental restructuring of the political relationships between corporations, the public,
and government. It is a must read for both scholars and citizens concerned with the
rising power of corporations and the declining power of average citizens.”
Raymond J. Michalowski, Arizona Regents Professor, Department of Criminology
and Criminal Justice, Northern Arizona University, USA
“Inthispathbreakingbook,Barakcriticallyexaminestherolesofmultinationalcorporations
and the state in both routinizing and trivializing major crimes and massive global harms.
Usingcasestudiesheeffectivelyexposesboththeinherentcontradictionsandtheneedfor
changeincurrentregulatorypolicies.Theworknotonlyoffersanumberofpotentialsolu-
tions,butisamajoradditiontothesociologicalandcriminologicalunderstandingofglobal
white-collarandcorporatecriminality.Ihighlyrecommendit.”
Henry N. Pontell, Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology,
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Professor Emeritus, Department of
Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine, USA
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UNCHECKED CORPORATE POWER
Why are crimes of the suite punished more leniently than crimes of the street?
When police killings of citizens go unpunished, political torture is sanctioned by
the state, and the financial frauds of Wall Street traders remain unprosecuted,
nothing succeeds with such regularity as the active failures of national states to
obstruct the crimes of the powerful.
Written from the perspective of global sustainability and as an unflinching and
unforgiving exposé of the full range of the crimes of the powerful, Unchecked
Corporate Power reveals how legalized authorities and political institutions charged
with the duty of protecting citizens from law-breaking and injurious activities have
increasingly become enablers and colluders with the very enterprises they are
obliged to regulate. Here, Gregg Barak explains why the United States and other
countries are duplicitous in their harsh reactions to street crimes in comparison to
the significantly more harmful and far-reaching crimes of the powerful, and why
the crimes of the powerful are treated as beyond incrimination.
What happens to nations that surrender ever-growing economic and political
powertothegloballysuperrichandthemammothmultinationalcorporationsthey
control? And what can people from around the world do to resist the criminality
and victimization perpetrated by multinationals, and generated by the prevailing
global political economy? Barak examines an array of multinational crimes—
corporate, environmental, financial, and state—and their state-legal responses, and
outlines policies and strategies for revolutionizing these contradictory relations of
capital reproduction, criminality, and unsustainability.
Gregg Barak is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Eastern Michigan
University,USA.HeistheeditorofTheRoutledgeInternationalHandbookoftheCrimes
of the Powerful, author of Theft of a Nation: Wall Street Looting and Federal Regulatory
Colluding, and recipient of the National White Collar Crime Center/White Collar
Crime Research Consortium’s Outstanding Publication Award for 2012.
CRIMES OF THE POWERFUL
Series Editor: Gregg Barak is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice
at Eastern Michigan University and a 2016-17 Fulbright Lecturer/Research
Scholar at the School of Law, Pontifical Catholic University do Rio Grande
do Sul, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. For more than 40 years, Barak has researched
and written widely on crime and justice. He is the author of several books,
including two award-winning titles—Gimme Shelter: A Social History of
Homelessness in Contemporary America (1991) and Theft of a Nation: Wall Street
Looting and Federal Regulatory Colluding (2012).
Crimes of the Powerful encompasses the harmful, injurious, and victimizing
behaviors perpetrated by privately or publicly operated businesses, corporations, and
organizations as well as the state mediated administrative, legalistic, and political
responses to these crimes.
The series draws attention to the commonalities of the theories, practices, and
controls of the crimes of the powerful. It focuses on the overlapping spheres and
inter-related worlds of a wide array of existing and recently developing areas of
social, historical, and behavioral inquiry into the wrongdoings of multinational
organizations, nation-states, stateless regimes, illegal networks, financialization,
globalization, and securitization.
These examinations of the crimes of the powerful straddle a variety of related
disciplines and areas of academic interest, including studies in criminology and
criminal justice; law and human rights; conflict, peace, and security; economic
change, environmental decay, and global sustainability.
1. Unchecked Corporate Power
Why the Crimes of Multinational Corporations Are Routinized Away and What
We Can Do About It
Gregg Barak
UNCHECKED
CORPORATE POWER
Why the Crimes of Multinational
Corporations Are Routinized Away
and What We Can Do About It
Gregg Barak
K ~~o~;J~n~~~up
ORKYOR LONDOLNLOONNDDOONN
Y
LONDONANDNEWYORK
Firstpublished2017
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
andbyRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2017GreggBarak
TherightofGreggBaraktobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhasbeenasserted
byhiminaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,Designsand
PatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor
utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now
knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinany
informationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthe
publishers.
Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered
trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintentto
infringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Acatalogrecordforthisbookhasbeenrequested
ISBN:978-1-138-95142-6(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-138-95144-0(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-66824-6(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
This book is dedicated to moving beyond Bernie’s “political
revolution” and toward a sustainable world for all.
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CONTENTS
List of illustrations xi
Other books by Gregg Barak xii
Preface xiii
PARTI
Routinizing the crimes of the powerful 1
Introduction: On the state routinization of unchecked
corporate power 3
1 Capitalism, corporations, and criminality 15
2 Why capitalist states “fail” to control the crimes of the powerful 42
PARTII
Violating the commons 67
3 Financial crimes: Violations of trusted securities 69
4 Environmental crimes: Violations of health and safety 88
5 Colluding crimes of states and corporations: Violations of the
community 119
Description:Why are crimes of the suite punished more leniently than crimes of the street? When police killings of citizens go unpunished, political torture is sanctioned by the state, and the financial frauds of Wall Street traders remain unprosecuted, nothing succeeds with such regularity as the active failur
