ABSTRACT
Corporate Crime, published in 1980, is the first and still the only comprehensive study of corporate law violations by our largest corporations in the Fortune 500. This chapter discusses the development of a criminological interest in corporate crime. It explains the nature of corporate crime, and discusses a number of issues involved in its study. The chapter also includes a comparative view of corporate crime twenty-five years after the publication of Corporate Crime. In legal terms, corporate crimes are, as Sutherland stated in White Collar Crime, administratively segregated from conventional or ordinary crime. This differential treatment is a product in part of the power of corporations to influence legislation so that violations do not have the stigma of the criminal law. Corporate Crime was basically similar in approach to that used by Sutherland: both studied the largest corporations and attempted to cover a wide range of types of violations and enforcement actions.
