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Edward Sutherland’s original definition of white-collar crime still holds resonance: white-collar crime is ‘a crime committed by a person of high respectability and high social status in the course of his (or her) occupation’. (Note the use of the word ‘high’ on two occasions.) This relic of my old sociology days in Ponders End Polytechnic was rediscovered this week, after I was invited to say a few words about white-collar crime for the new BBC-OU Thinking Allowed series.

The problem with white-collar crime is that it is seldom black or white, and a significant minority of it is far from petty. It is all around us and it is a rather complex phenomenon. It appears to be far more tolerated in society than other forms of crime.

Sutherland’s 1947 definition could, I believe, be applied to two actions, in their different ways both criminal, that have generated some of the worst carnage in the history of the world – the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, and the invasion of Iraq. For, however we define it, white-collar crime seems to be a particularly grubby, devious and, at times, sinister and nasty activity, which often has extremely damaging human, and far-reaching societal impacts.

White-collar crime is ‘a crime committed by a person of high respectability and high social status in the course of his (or her) occupation'.

Many white-collar criminals escape punishment, and more often than not, their misguided gains are not redeemed. Where justice does follow white-collar criminals – as in the recent US prosecution of Bernie Madoff for fraud – it seems the exception rather than the rule; mainly because the costs of prosecuting are so prohibitive, and the justification for prosecuting is often so complex and morally dense, very few legislators bother.

There is an old saying: where there is money to be made, fraud is not far behind, like bees to honey. White-collar crime is enormously costly for society. In the UK, a report from the Association of Chief Police Officers revealed that, in 2007, fraud, for example, was costing the UK a huge sum – between £14bn and £20bn each year, equivalent to a loss of £330 for every UK inhabitant every year. So in the last three years, white-collar fraudsters have done me, and you, out of approximately £2,000! And mostly got away with it!

White-collar criminals are in the main sentenced, punished and perceived by the public differently to other types of criminals. The length of criminal penalties tend to be related to the degree of physical force or violence involved in a crime – rather than to the amount of monetary loss – though this does not always mean that the punishment fits the crime, as one of my examples might reveal.

For many, too, the opportunity for fraud, bribery, insider trading, embezzlement, identity theft, illegal waste dumping, forgery, fiddling expenses (all MPs note) are activities differentially distributed in society. In the age of new technologies, more and more of us are at it, and in increasingly more sophisticated and difficult to detect ways. Who has not illegally downloaded music or a movie, for example? But there are contradictions.

Some people are more vulnerable to prosecution than others. For example, each year over 700 people, mostly women, are imprisoned for not paying their TV licence fee, while our prisons remain relatively free of tax evaders. Most are living offshore anyway. In the US, in 2007, the latest figures I could find revealed that Americans owed, in tax, the equivalent of 14 per cent of federal revenues – $345bn.

In the UK, our Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has a deplorable history of failed prosecutions. And yet, in UK society, benefit fraudsters are far more likely than income tax evaders to face justice, while individuals indulging in occupational crime are more likely to face justice than corporations acting criminally, and prosecutions for state-sponsored corporate crime are very rare indeed.

Justice is still chasing those responsible for the world’s worst industrial environmental disaster – the Bhopal gas leak in India – which killed over 7,000 people, poisoned a further 500,000 and the impacts of which are still being felt today. The Indian Government estimate that a further 15,000 people have since died, and that each month 15 more people die because of the fatal legacy of toxic contamination.

In June 2009, The Congress of the United States wrote to the Chief Executive Officer of Dow Chemical Company (Dow now own Union Carbide who ran the Bhopal site at the time of the 1984 disaster):

This coming December marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the chemical disaster in Bhopal, India. It is with urgency that we write to urge Dow Chemical Company – which wholly owns Union Carbide – to immediately take steps towards remediation and redress. We request that Dow ensures that a representative appear in the ongoing legal cases in India regarding Bhopal, that Dow meets the demands of the survivors for medical and economic rehabilitation, and cleans up the soil and groundwater contamination in and around the factory site …

Despite repeated public requests and protests around the world, Union Carbide has refused to appear before the Bhopal District Court to face the criminal charges pending against it for the disaster. Union Carbide was served with a summons to appear in Bhopal District Court in 1992 and publicly stated it would not respond to the summons. Although Dow Chemical set aside $2.2 billion in 2002 to put towards Union Carbide's pending asbestos liabilities in the United States, it has continued to evade the liabilities it inherited from Bhopal.

So it seems the innocent victims of the worst of corporate excess imaginable can still find justice elusive.

Of course, one reason for prevarication and lack of action is that more benign treatment is possible because it is difficult to assign blame, and because prosecuting corporations can be damaging to innocent employees and shareholders, who play no part in events that could result in prosecution.

In the UK, those institutions established to protect us from white-collar crime, however mundane, have rather blemished track records. The SFO’s authority was further undermined when Tony Blair controversially decided to terminate its investigations into BAE, thus ensuring that any allegations about corporate bribery and corruption between BAE and Saudi princes could not be substantiated in law. You might want to consider this, while assessing whether you think Tony Blair is a fit and proper person when it comes to the Presidency of the European Union; he does have what might be called ‘white-collar baggage’. Even the Premier League in football seems to have more rigorous ‘fit and proper person’ tests, though even these can be circumscribed.

I was thinking about Sutherland’s definition and Tony Blair’s rumoured bid for the European Presidency afresh today, when I read about how protestors in the Medway area had defaced British Legion Poppy Appeal posters.

The poster shows Ms Wright, from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, who became one of the public faces of the Poppy Appeal after her husband, Damian, died in a roadside explosion in Afghanistan in 2007, aged 23. Of course, the nation is divided on whether Britain should be conducting a war in Afghanistan, and in this instance the message ‘prosecute Blair’ might have been better employed in reference to the invasion of Iraq – an invasion which, lacking any UN Security Council mandate, had no strict legal justification. It was not an invasion of self-defence, no matter how hard Blair tried to fudge the weapons of mass destruction issue. No weapons of mass destruction have ever been found, and the subsequent deaths, of between 100,000 and a million people (so far), is a very high price to pay for regime change. Six years after the invasion, the scars still plague the Iraqi people.

On October 26th, Foreign Secretary David Milliband, backing Blair for EU President, said the EU needed a President who was ‘a big hitter who could stop the traffic’. Blair’s role in the invasion of Iraq certainly exhibited big hitting and it did stop the traffic in many places. The bombs still destroy lives and stop the traffic across Iraq. Over 700 people were killed this week in the Green Zone in Baghdad. The traffic was not so much stopped as blown to smithereens.

Within the UK, there are, as yet, no means for bringing charges against Blair, even if a strong case could be made on legal grounds for the Iraq invasion. Yes, Blair will be called to testify at the public inquiry into the war, which begins on November 24th this year, but he will not face any retribution. In 2006, the Law Lords decided that international crimes of aggression had not been enshrined in our domestic laws

The higher your social status...the more likely you are to get away with it

But Blair would run the risk of arrest in those countries that have now incorporated international crimes of aggression under their domestic laws. So far within the EU, two countries, Latvia and Estonia, have done so. Given the cloud that still surrounds the reasons for going to war in Iraq, it might be rather risky to elect a person as President of the European Union, who could be vulnerable to prosecution within member states. Perhaps Blair should stick to being Middle East envoy, where he has made little progress, and where, after all, there is far more important work to do.

So, thinking aloud about white-collar crime can take you on a long and difficult journey, from Bhopal to Iraq, and you might conclude, like me, that not only does the punishment seldom fit the crime, but that the higher your social status, no matter how heinous the act, the more likely you are to get away with it. I mean look at Blair’s only definite ally for President among European leaders, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi…no don’t tempt me.

Find out more

• Thinking Allowed
• OpenLearn: The meaning of crime – free learning material from The Open University

About the author

Richard Skellington edits Society Matters for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. He’s an administrator who manages the Environment, Development and International Studies programme.

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When asked what he thought of Western Civilisation, Mahatma Gandhi famously replied: ‘I think it would be an excellent idea’. The wisdom of his words came to me the other week when I read that in 2008 the Metropolitan Police had used new anti-terror laws to stop and search 58 children aged 9 or under – 10 girls and 48 boys. How can this be justified, even under the guise of fighting terrorism?

Scotland Yard
[image © copyright Mr Ush, some rights reserved]

These police officers had obviously not heard of other contributions on the theme of what constitutes a ‘civilised society’. Louis Pasteur once said that whenever he approached a child he was always inspired by two sentiments: tenderness for what the child is, and respect for what the child may become.

What could have provoked 58 separate suspicions that a child under 10 years of age could be a terror threat? If we do not stand up for children in our society, what does it say about the society in which we live? To what depths we have sunk when we resort to apprehending in London alone so many children under the age of criminal responsibility in a single year. None of the children were subsequently found to be linked to terror offences.

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 gives police wide powers to stop and search without the need for officers to have reasonable suspicion. Further examination of the data reveals that in 2008 a massive 2,331 children aged 15 and under were apprehended under the Act, suggesting perhaps that the Metropolitan Police have been using these powers as an instrument of general policing rather than for the special purposes for which they were devised.

It can hardly foster community relations when any police force abuses its powers through stop and search measures. In 2008 alone the Metropolitan Police carried out 170,000 stop and searches using Section 44. Alas, I could not find any national data for 2008 under Section 44 of the Act, but Hansard of 10th March 2008 proved more fruitful: interestingly, in the first 6 years since the Act was introduced, only six arrests resulted from over 168,000 stop and searches. The more recent data suggests that since 2005-6 the use of Section 44 powers have escalated hugely.

New Scotland Yard argue that the searches of children aged 9 or under is justified. Indeed many people would argue that this is the price we have to pay for combating terrorism, and that children who were apprehended are more likely to have been accompanying an adult who may have aroused police suspicions. However, no child under 10 has so far been associated with terrorist activity, and none of the children apprehended -or even their relatives - have so far been charged under the Act.

This trend mirrors several practices our so-called ‘civilised society’ imposes on the rights and welfare of children. A related issue of concern is the increasing number of asylum-seeking children now detained. Again in August disturbing figures were published which revealed that in the first 6 months of 2009, 470 children were detained indefinitely without charge. Their only crime appears to have been to try and escape war, torture, violence and persecution.

In August it was revealed that over one third of these children were locked up for over one month (The Guardian, 31 August 2009). It came as a shock to discover that the United Kingdom now boasts one of the worst records in Europe for the detention of children. So, in a real way, I am no longer surprised to discover that the Metropolitan Police are using whatever legislation they can to stop and search children under the age of criminal responsibility.

It was Franklin D. Roosevelt who in his Inaugural Presidential Address in 1933 asserted his firm belief that his people had ‘nothing to fear except fear itself’. Fear is a cancer that slowly eats away at civilisation. These disturbing figures on the way we are treating children in the UK should shame us all. Sadly our society seems to be losing its capacity for compassion. We seem to be drifting remorselessly towards more brutal and racist solutions to problems that deserve a ‘civilised’ response. Looking around the political scene in the UK several months prior to the formation of a new Government it is disturbing to find that few politicians seem to either be aware of the problem or care much for the implications. Children are the best resource we have. We must stop abusing them.

About the author

Richard Skellington edits Society Matters for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. He’s an administrator who manages the Environment, Development and International Studies programme.

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The facts appear all too depressingly familiar. The behaviour of Brits abroad used to be more of a national embarrassment during the silly season but now it is becoming more of an all year round problem.

Drinking in a bar

At home we seem to binge drink all-year round, if we are to believe the more sensational reports of the tabloid red tops. Britain now has binge drinking etched throughout its national rock. Now our binge drinking culture – not simply confined to holidays, football matches, and stag and hen parties - has become an export industry as wave upon wave of British tourists head for the Mediterranean and the urban centres of old and new Europe opened up by low-price air fares. The British binge drinking culture has even reached Dubai where a surge in British arrests has been reported since 2007.

Newspaper headlines tackle the problem with gusto and relish!

• 'Brits behaving badly: they came, they drank, they peed'
• 'Brit teenagers are the binge-drinking champions of Europe'
• 'Curse of the boozy Britons'
• 'Arrests up among British travelling abroad'
• 'Wish you weren‘t here, Greece tells tourists'

In late July this year the Foreign Office urged UK holidaymakers to curb their alcohol consumption and avoid the risks of travelling abroad. The campaign warned Brits that there was 'another side to paradise' and drew attention to the dangers they may encounter. For some it could be a night in the cells. For others it could mean hospital, or worse. This week, in Greece, a Greek woman was accused of setting fire to a British tourist after he allegedly pulled down his trousers in front of her. Drink less and you improve your prospects of not becoming a victim is the Foreign Office mantra.

I have friends who plan their holidays around those times when it is more likely that their historic cultural destination will not be invaded by drunken British tourists. I am always impressed on holiday in Italy, especially in Sardinia, how different cultures generate completely acceptable behaviour in young and old alike rather than the boorish British excess of rowdy drunkenness. Is it any wonder that our European neighbours are becoming increasingly more unwelcoming?

The Foreign Office campaign, aimed mainly at 18-30 holidaymakers, distributed leaflets and posters across the tourist hot spots of Europe, especially new destinations such as the Baltic States and Turkey, and the more familiar sun-seeking paradises of Spain and Greece.The leaflets urge holidaymakers to 'know their limits'. Flyers, beer mats and business cards reading ‘If you drink too much, things can get out of control’ have been handed out to British tourists on Greek islands as part of the campaign.

The Foreign Office has also funded English lessons for police officers in Greece, where 70 per cent of consulate cases involve British tourists who have got into difficulty, including in May this year, a group of men dressed in Nun habits who were arrested for baring their bottoms in Crete. According to Foreign Office data, 16 to 20-year olds represent a third of all Britons visiting Greece, but account for more than 70 per cent of Britain’s annual 800-900 consular cases there. Even tee-shirt companies have muscled in on the market.

Greece’s conservative government vowed to clean up resorts last year, saying much drink-related misconduct was due to profit-hungry bar owners supplying tourists with drinks adulterated with industrial alcohol. This export industry works both ways. The downside to a thriving local economy fueled by British tourist currency is the problems which often come with drunken behaviour, and the cost of coping with it, which according to one authoritative source now is as high as £100bn a year.

A range of European capitals have also suffered during 2009. Historic monuments seem to attract some of the worst activity. On August 6^th the Mayor of the Latvian capital of Riga added his name to a long list of exasperated civic leaders, when he said, after a group of British tourists urinated against the city’s Monument of Freedom: ‘stag parties urinating against the country’s most revered national monument was particularly offensive’.

This episode is yet another example of the way some British tourists show disrespect to other cultures. The Monument to Freedom commemorates Latvian dead in the struggle for independence and is a symbol of resistance during Soviet rule. ‘It’s sacred to Latvians’, explained the Mayor, ‘even the Soviets daren’t touch it.’ And if that is good enough for the Soviets, no enemy to alcoholic excess themselves, it should be good enough for the rest of us. Riga is just one destination in new Europe opened up by cheap flights to old Europe. Most of the tourists who visit east European capitols are British. The exasperated mayor of Riga concluded: ‘If we had other tourists, then British visitors who **** about all of the time would not be as noticeable.’

The latest Foreign Office data published in 2008 shows the scale of the problem. As tourist destinations widen so too does the problem of British drinking behaviour. Arrests in Spain and Greece for binge drinking are rapidly increasing. In France, British arrests rose by over 42 per cent in a single year and in Spain there was a 33 per cent increase.

What are the reasons for these increasing tends? No doubt they are culturally and socially rooted, and complex. The Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS) published research this year suggesting the problem is a domestic one. We are simply exporting abroad a British phenomenon. In the last 10 years binge drinking in the UK among girls, for example, has increased so much that the UK now ranks second to Denmark in the girl binge drinking European league table. IAS estimate the cost of British drinking behaviour abroad now exceeds 125 billion Euros a year.

Another survey by the health charity Developing Patient Partnerships (DPP) revealed over a quarter of Britons drank alcohol with the sole intention of ‘getting drunk’, and the proportion doubled for those in the 18-24 year old age group. The IAS report recommends raising taxation, and raising the price of alcohol, curbing the power of supermarkets to sell strong alcohol cheaply, ending happy hours, placing greater investment in public education and increasing voluntary partnerships to ensure a greater understanding and respect for overseas cultures. In the UK alone, Government figures suggest that between 5 and 9 million UK children are living in families damaged by alcohol while nearly 10,000 UK deaths occur each year to bystanders and passengers from drink-driving.

Of course, Britain is not alone of course in having a drink problem. Alcohol misuse is a problem in many states in the European Union. But I do not see groups of European nationals indulging in group alcoholic excess while holidaying in Britain. Alcohol fuelled anti-social behaviour seems increasingly attached to British tourism. The victims can be the perpetrators but more often than not it is the host community that has to bear the full impact.

Find out more: Alcohol and human health

About the author

Richard Skellington edits Society Matters for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. He’s an administrator who manages the Environment, Development and International Studies programme.

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