Crimes That Harm Business Versus Crimes Committed by Business
I’ve got to admit, this is one of the more interesting discussion posts I’ve done! I’ll begin by saying that both types of crime, corporate and individual, are both heinous. Assault, murder, embezzlement, human trafficking and rape are just a few crimes that can be committed, and are typically done outside of the world of corporate crime. With that said, white collar or business crimes are often committed by members of the ‘privileged’ socioeconomic classes and include “lawyers helping criminal clients launder their money, executives bribing public officials to achieve public contracts, or accountants manipulating balance sheets to avoid taxes” (Gottschalk, 2011). Even though I am not a proponent of one type of crime over another, for the sake of this discussion I will say that corporate crime can have more far reaching consequences than 1-on-1 crime. The 1989 Exxon Valdez and the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spills are both examples of corporate environmental crimes. An estimated 100-million gallons spilled with the Valdez and more than 200 million gallons of crude oil was released into the Gulf of Mexico for a total of 87 days with the Deepwater Horizon, making it the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. BP “was grossly negligent in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, a federal judge ruled, handing down a decision that could cost the company as much as $18 billion in pollution fines for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill” (Gilbert & Scheck, 2014). During the legal proceedings for the BP spill it was determined that “BP took measures to cut costs despite safety risks. Some of these decisions evinced an extreme
