ABSTRACT
This chapter accounts for the symbiotic nature of crimes of the powerful and the driving forces behind them, offering a discussion on capital accumulation and the “revolving doors” between organizations. We suggest that the gravest harms are all wrapped up in larger systems of economics, politics, and social orders and can be understood as interdependent and multidirectional. We show how the political economy of neoliberalism in the modern world is steeped in the constant drive for profit, consumerism and commodification, the buying off and corruption of political systems, and the disproportionately powerful driving most aspects of law, justice, and social policy. We close by suggesting that to fully understand crimes of the powerful means to understand them as epiphenomenal, or as outcomes of broader economic and political relationships, both domestically and internationally.
