Dave Whyte

Unmasking the Crimes of the Powerful

Even in formally open, liberal, democratic states, a series of barriers exist as obstacles to critical criminologists who wish to conduct research that scrutinises the activities of powerful states and corporations. Much evidence suggests that in the current political climate, the barring of access to sources of data, neo-liberal re-configurations in the funding of research, and the narrowing of publishing and dissemination opportunities to counter-hegemonic voices are severely limiting the ability to conduct critical research. This article reports on recent experiences of researchers concerned with unmasking the crimes of the powerful and argues that, despite the obstacles power sources use to obscure and mystify the illegal and violent practices engaged in by states and corporations, there remains fertile space around research agendas, and in universities, for critical researchers to exploit. To gain insight from the ways in which researchers can, and do, establish alternative agendas, this article seeks to explore some of the principles that might inform and encourage those forms of resistance, and to establish how critical criminologists might continue to subject the powerful to scrutiny.

Researching Corporate and White-Collar Crimeinan Eraof Neo-Liberalism

Research conducted within the discipline of criminology has been relatively blind to corporate and white-collar crime, a myopia that has remained even in the face of overwhelming evidence that in both Britain and in the United States of America the social and economic impact of corporate and white-collar crimes upon their victims massively exceeds the corresponding impact of conventional crimes.1 This last fact is acknowledged inmuch contemporary criminology, though such acknowledgment tends to appear somewhat gesturally, as if mere recognition of the existence of corporate and white-collar crimes is enough to bolster the integrity of criminological research. The truth of the matter is that, despite such token recognition of the crimes of the powerful, criminological research rarely takes these types of offenses and offenders as an object of study.