Special Issue : Finance, Harm And White Collar Crime (original) (raw)

2016, Crime Law and Social Change

The current worldwide financial problems have their roots in U.S. home mortgage lending practices. The global meltdown of 2008 was influenced by flawed financial policies, misrepresentations, irresponsibility, and not an inconsiderable amount of concerted ignorance [1, 2]. To what extent were demonstrable crimes involved? Who were the offenders? Clearly vast numbers of people were harmed by financial sector actions, on a worldwide basis although not uniformly. The nature of these problems goes beyond the boundaries of criminology reaching zemiology, or the study of social harms. The study of such social harms can be exemplified in many ways: for example, by looking at housing finance as harm, either through predatory lending [3, 4] or through mortgage redlining [5] which is a form of place-based discrimination from housing finance [6]. But many other forms of social harm can be identified in this realm. Beyond the financial crisis scenario, tax fraud and other financial crimes cause economic damage up to 20 times greater than that of traditional crimes, at least in the Western world [7]. The most recent scandal of tax evasion, the so-called Panama papers scandal, highlights the global nature of this problem [8]. Longterm social harm, including environmental impact, has been identified in relation to tax evasion practices (see e.g. [9]). Who is responsible for these actions? This special issue searches for some answers to these questions by placing the problem of crime and harm in the financial sector in a wider but focused interdisciplinary context, bringing together articles written by sociologists, criminologists, geographers, economists and political scientists.