ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what has been called the "quiet violence" of corporations. It deals with offenses that do not have such long historical pedigrees. These are modern offenses in the sense that they developed out of the industrialization and modernization of production in the past few centuries. In an influential book, The Closing Circle: Nature, Men, and Technology, environmental activist Barry Commoner linked rising levels of industrial pollution to the development of new technologies. He observed that though new technological developments typically increase profits for business, they frequently are accompanied by detrimental environmental side effects. The primary responsibility of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to clean up existing pollution problems and protect the environment and human health by enforcing environmental laws enacted by Congress. Recall that white-collar crime has three main properties: specialized access, spatial separation, and superficial appearance of legitimacy.
