Abstract:
The field of white-collar/corporate crime has been studied by scholars from many disciplinary fields. Yet, the ambiguity and complexity of the subject, dearth of program and policy evaluation, poor or inaccessible data and lack of systematic empirical research has precluded any consensus about its causes or what can be done to prevent and control it. Concern about the global financial crisis of 2008 and its association with fraudulent activities in the mortgage and securities markets has brought white-collar crime back to the forefront of criminological inquiry. New research--particularly on foreclosures and crime; evidence-based criminology and criminal justice; and vignette studies of corporate crime have provided insight into some of the longstanding debates in the field while also revealing new and interesting puzzles for scholars to explore. In this presentation, I summarize these new developments and suggest that the revitalization of a “criminogenic tier” approach to organizational actors, firms and markets may be an important step toward making sense of white-collar crime.
Lecturer:
Dr. Sally Simpson is Professor and Chair of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include corporate crime, criminological theory, and the intersection between gender, race, class and crime. She is the former Chair of the Crime, Law, and Deviance Section of the American Sociological Association, past President of the White-Collar Crime Research Consortium and recipient of the Herbert Bloch Award from the American Society of Criminology. She serves on the Board of the Criminal Justice Information Advisory Board and the Police Training Commission for the State of Maryland. Simpson is an honorary Fellow in the American Society of Criminology and, in 2008, was named Distinguished Scholar by the Division on Women and Crime, American Society of Criminology.
Barrister Club, part of the Moritz College of Law
