ABSTRACT
Corporate Crime, published in 1980, is the first and still the only comprehensive study of corporate law violations by the largest corporations in the Fortune 500. The book laid the groundwork for the analyses of important aspects of corporate behavior and definitions to study corporate crime and found ways of locating corporate violations from various sources and even drew up measures of the seriousness of crimes. This chapter discusses the development of a criminological interest in corporate crime, explains the nature of corporate crime, and discusses a number of issues involved in its study and concludes with a comparative view of corporate crime twenty-five years after the publication of Corporate Crime. Crime can be divided into three main types: conventional or ordinary; occupational; or organizational. Corporate unethical practices and law violations can be attributed to internal structure or to external factors such as an unfair or difficult position in the market.
