ABSTRACT
If you were to stop one hundred people in the street and ask them to list, in their opinion, the five most serious crimes in Britain today, it's a very safe bet that in the vast majority of responses no form of corporate crime would feature. This is not to be disparaging of popular understandings of crime, for these ways of seeing are socially constructed. So, check today's newspapers for reports of political discussions or Home Office statements on law and order: again, corporate crime will be absent. Now scour those newspapers more thoroughly, and try to find corporate crime stories — corporate crime may be covered, but is unlikely to be given prominence, nor discussed in the language reserved for ‘real’ crime, and is more likely to be financial ‘scandals’, in specialist sections far from the headline-grabbing news pages. Check your TV guide for today's viewing, and search for corporate crime coverage amongst what will no doubt be a great deal of fictional, real-life and documentary programmes on crime — and it would be a surprise to find much, if any.
