NCJ Number
147154
Date Published
1993
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This essay introduces issues raised by organizational law violations.
Abstract
Most theories and conceptions of law violation and victimization center on persons rather than on organizations. This essay introduces subjects to be covered in essays contained in this volume which stress that an emphasis solely or preponderantly on individuals can provide only an incomplete account of crime in America. The authors discuss the five limitations of the current white-collar crime literature on organizational wrongdoing which the essays in this volume seek to correct. These limitations include: the general neglect of organizations as victims of law violations; the tendency to focus solely or preponderantly on large profit-making organizations and on the behavior of corporate officers and managers as major offenders; the tendency to focus on particular named organizations and the violations of their white-collar employees rather than on how industrial and commercial organizations create and sustain particular patterns of violation; the investigation of the control of organizational law violations by studying the behavior of enforcement or regulatory agencies and their agents and rarely by focusing on how enforcement or regulation interacts with an environment; and the tendency to treat violations of administrative law as violations of criminal law. The essays bring an organizational and social system analysis to the study of organizational behavior and expand the horizons beyond the scope of the criminal law and criminal justice system to include administrative law and legal regulation. Particular industries discussed in the subsequent essays include, inter alia, the nursing home industry, the savings and loan industry, the investment industry, and the cartage industry in New York. 4 references