Book chapter
What Do We Owe the Victims of Corporate Crime?
Corporate Crime, pp.69-86
Advances in Criminological Theory Series, v. 31, Taylor & Francis Group
2025
DOI: 10.4324/9781003088455-6
Abstract
A casual observer would be excused for thinking that corporate crimes are generally victimless. Even an informed observer would be hard pressed to articulate how, if at all, the criminal justice system accounts for victims when it resolves cases against corporations. When prosecutors focus on big-sticker fines and compliance mandates, victims drop out of the equation. Sometimes, prosecutors even take steps to actively exclude victims. This vague impression about the absence of victim participation in corporate criminal justice is empirically verifiable. Drawing on an original, hand-collected data set of corporate criminal resolutions to investigations, I argue that the most striking thing about corporations' victims is how little we know about them. This chapter seeks to reintroduce prosecutors, judges, and scholars to the victims of corporate crime. It uncovers mechanisms through which the criminal justice system elides the many thousands of people corporations physically and financially injure each year. Rather than allow our public representatives to pretend these victims do not exist, we should force the question: what do we owe them? The place to start is finding out who they are. Only then can we begin to acknowledge the wrong they suffered. In the chapter, I offer several proposals for making progress.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- What Do We Owe the Victims of Corporate Crime?
- Creators
- Mihailis E. Diamantis
- Contributors
- Miranda A. Galvin (Editor)William S. Laufer (Editor)
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Corporate Crime, pp.69-86
- Series
- Advances in Criminological Theory Series; v. 31
- DOI
- 10.4324/9781003088455-6
- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis Group; Oxford
- Alternative title
- Corporate Crime
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2025
- Academic Unit
- Finance; Law Faculty; Philosophy
- Record Identifier
- 9984847997402771
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