Sociološki Pregled (Jan 2011)
Corporate crime: Criminological and cultural aspects
Abstract
The process of economic transition in Serbia has highlighted the problem of socially responsible behavior of corporations and especially the growing phenomenon of corporate crime. The consequences of corporate wrongdoing are almost everywhere and cannot be overseen. The most tremendous ones are those related to human casualties, environmental disasters, long-term negative health effects and great material budget losses on local and state levels. The fact that corporations are profiting from criminal activity which causes enormous damage to society and individuals makes public policy makers face the ultimate choice - either to devise new effective measures for reducing and controlling this phenomenon or to retain the standard model of crime control, in accordance with the principles of classical criminal law. The first choice would require one of the pillars of criminal law - the principle of individual and subjective guilt of physical persons as the exclusive grounds for imposing criminal liability - to be either modified and widened in order to be used as a base for imposing corporate criminal liability or partially changed by new criminal law categories which would introduce different grounds for imposing criminal liability on an organization. The second choice would require the decision-makers to refuse to change old and well-established principles. The criminal reality, however, has made most legislatures in Europe and around the world choose the first option and introduce different forms of corporate criminal liability. Serbian criminal legislation has been headed in the same direction since 2008, when it was changed in order to enable the imposing of liability for criminal acts on corporations. However, although corporate criminal liability is becoming the European legislative standard, one question remains - Is this the only measure of criminal politics which can be used as a means of reducing and preventing corporate crime? The authors analyze criminological, cultural and other aspects of corporate crime and point to some potentially positive effects of measures based on the understanding of the characteristics and functioning of contemporary corporations. The first part of the article highlights the concept and features of corporate crime and suggests a broad criminological definition which encompasses its numerous aspects. The authors then focus on cultural aspects of corporate crime and the role of corporate culture type in choosing the criminal behavior as a way of gaining profit. In the second part, the authors examine the concept of internal corporate security culture and analyze basic models of corporate criminal liability and their relation to the concept of corporate security culture.
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