Like Karl Marx, contemplating wood theft in Germany in 1846
and being struck by the fact that the crime was invented, in contradistinction
from the way he was taught law operated, Edwin H. Sutherland was a
criminologist/sociologist who, in the 1930s, began looking at crimes committed
by people other than the urban marginals and degenerates who were the usual
object of criminological interest, and he was struck by the inability of theory
to capture either their practices or motives.
Marx, of course, began to
understand class out of the invention of crime, and soon went on to devise a
vast theory about the way class conflict was shaping the society of capital.
Sutherland did not go so far. But where he went is of interest.
The reason Sutherland started investigating “white collar
crime” (indeed, he coined the phrase) had to do with his Deweyian theory that
crime was a learned activity. The criminological paradigms of the 30s, inherited
from the 19th century, attributed crime to inheritance,
degeneration, poverty, broken homes, or individual viciousness. Sutherland’s
theory, which he called differential association, was that crime was learned
through the symbols and uses of groups. Not gangs, not groups that are composed
of people personally acquainted with each other – although these, too, are
groups – but groups in the larger sense of members who identify with some
collective. It is in these groups that the inhibition or disinhibition to crime
evolves.
Here’s an example, from the recent past. In 2016, Brock
Turner, a Stanford University athlete, was actually caught physically raping a
passed out woman. He was convicted of this rape. The sentence handed down by
Judge Aaron Persky was six months. Three months was shaved off, as time already
served. In his statement about the punishment, Persky said that sentencing
Turner to prison for a long time could have a “severe impact” on him.
That phrase “severe impact” reveals an abyss of assumptions
about class in the U.S. – and, in particular, the assumption that certain
members of the group of the affluent and educated have “futures” that must be
preserved. Persky, to use Sutherland’s phrase, was differentially associated
with Turner. Certain crimes that would
be severely repressed by certain members of certain groups – for whom the “severe
impact” of the penitentiary is designed – are treated much more softly when
committed by members of other groups. This is not simply a statistical fact,
but a passed around piece of knowledge – in the group, this is known. Impunity
is a social bond.
Sutherland, however, is not concerned so much with class as with
his theory, which, remember, is in opposition to the ruling criminological
theories of the time – and of now. Criminology has not changed that much, and
if Hilary Clinton was comfortable talking about “super predators” in the 90s,
and the NYT opinion page is a reliable source for talk about the “underclass”
now, it is due to this paradigm.
Sutherland, thus, turned to the upperclass. He compiled a
list of the seventy largest publicly traded corporations, and went over 45
years of court records. Here’s what he found:
This tabulation of the crimes of the seventy largest
corporations in the United States gives a total of 980 adverse decisions. Every
one of the seventy corporations has a decision against it, and the average
number of decisions is 14.0. Of these seventy corporations, 98 percent are
recidivists; that is, they have two or more adverse decisions. Several states
have enacted habitual crimlnal laws, which define an habitual criminal as a
person who has been convicted four times of felonies. If we use this number and
do no limit the convictions to felonies, 90 percent of the seventy largest
corporations in the IUnited States are habitual criminals.”
Aye, but the kicker for some of Sutherland’s opponents was
the conditional phrase, “if we do not limit the convictions to felonies.” Which
gets us more into the question of class and power.
To be continued.
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