Reasons for differences in amount of convictions for corporate crime, and conventional crime

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Criminology essay

What are the reasons for the differences between the amount of convictions for ‘Corporate crime’ and Conventional crime?’

Corporate crime refers to crime that has spanned over a period of time involving a range of sources and related implications. This is often cleverly masked crime that is likely to resemble a huge jigsaw puzzle consisting of the actions of the bourgeoisie. Due to the status and contacts that go hand in hand with people in positions of power their acts of crime and deviance may merely stay as the ‘undetected crime’ in society regardless of its consequences and it’s severity in nature.

Conventional crime tends to relate to the more day-day crimes committed by the proletariat amongst society. Examples include some car crime, petty theft, low-level fraud etc. Systems, values and family structural positions in society all encompass social attitudes in how crime is acknowledged, defined and possibly prosecuted.

‘For more than a century and a half a particular model of family life has been dominant. It is, essentially, the model of the middle-class Victorian family: the private, self-contained unit, with breadwinning father married to non-employed caring mother and two or more children. It has never been universal. However, it has exerted a forceful influence as am ideal. The origins of its influence can be traced to Victorian philanthropy: in the interests of reforming the working classes and saving them from inequalities forced upon them by industrialisation, the well-meaning middle classes set about teaching temperance and respectability- a package including  a system of values about family life which emphasised maternal care, domesticity, and privacy. Gradually, over many decades, the middle-class model spread into the working class communities. By the 1950’s, it had become conventional for a working class woman to be isolated at home, with her children as her prime concern and the centre of her attention, while her husband went out to learn a living for them all. The family was seen as a refuge, a ‘haven in a heartless world.’

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Coote, Harman, & Hewitt (1994)

The above text suggests that wider social processes exercise influence on family forms and patterns.

From the 1960’s onwards a large amount of literature in support of women’s liberation came from the presses. Many suggestions have been put forward by feminist writers as to how women’s position in society can be improved. There has however been no agreement about the complete aims of women’s liberation.

Although factors such as social class have huge impact on a person’s life people generally now have more freedom of expression and are encouraged to ...

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