ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the continuity between legality and illegality is crucial for an understanding of corporate, state, white-collar crime, and crimes of the powerful in general. After some preliminary observations around the legal–illegal continuum, this chapter attempts to identify the novel traits of the crimes of the powerful which make the causes of environmental harm possible. It then examines how the very logic of economic development, supported by the ‘science’ of economics, may be, even if legitimate, equally or more harmful and destructive. Drawing on examples from Europe and North America, the author demonstrates how certain types of environmental harm result from partnerships between members of conventional criminal organisations and official actors operating in the economic and political spheres. In so doing, the author exposes and indicts those who participate in ‘crimes of the economy’—pervasive and persistent harm caused by the economic initiative itself, and aided by the philosophies underpinning and legitimising it.
