ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces some stories involving incidents and practices that are unequivocally illegal, and can very clearly be represented and described as corporate crimes. It provides some indication of the scale of corporate harm in the UK, organised around a selection of exemplar categories: corporate theft and fraud, corporate crimes against consumers (food crimes), corporate crimes against workers (safety crimes) and corporate crimes against the environment. Next, the chapter explores the ways that governments and private corporations interact as 'partners in crime'. The depth of this partnership raises the possibility that particular groups and institutions that are normally regarded as existing 'outside' of the state, can be used to project state power. It reveals how any recognition of corporate crime can only proceed adequately with an understanding of the role of the state. The corporate form and the state are thus inextricably linked to the extent that, in contemporary capitalism, each is a condition of existence of the other.
