Crime, Harm and Responsibility

Abstract

Recent events in the world of banking have brought afresh to our attention a perennial problem in criminology: namely the nature of the criminological object. I have written elsewhere that criminology is paradoxically unable to state the nature of its object until it has completed its study into whatever that object might be (Crewe 2010a). The now famous claim by Michael and Adler (1933), who suggest that crime is no more nor less than that which is defined as such in law, prevents criminology from including in its conception of its object of study those egregious behaviours of, for example, investment bankers, the owners of the Herald of Free Enterprise, the traders of Enron, the owners of the Bhopal chemical plant and so on. That is, concentration on acts that are in contravention of the criminal code precludes study of behaviours which, while legal, clearly cause considerable harm. The workers of Enron, for example, broke no laws when they effectively robbed hospitals of their electricity supply (Elkind & McLean 2003). This has led to calls for criminology to define its object in terms of the magnitude of harm a particular problematic behaviour brings about. This has, by and large, become a call that divides criminology into two relatively secure camps: those for whom crime cannot be defined in any way other than as infraction of the law, and those for whom such an approach is to fail in one’s duty to speak truth to power.

We are all guilty of all and for all men before all, and I more than the others.

Dostoevsky (Brothers Karamazov)