Understanding and Investigating Transnational Corporate Crime - Assignment Example

Running head: Transnational Corporate Crime Understanding and Investigating Transnational Corporate Crime [Writer’s Name] [Institution’s Name] Understanding and Investigating Transnational Corporate Crime Introduction The terms transnational corporate crime and cross-border crime bring about inexpressible worries. These words reflect a strong and elusive hazard, a kind of an approaching hazard which lingers in nations resulting in an addition to its vicious potential character. The conflicts and terror that transnational and cross-border crime causes presents a challenge in the identifying of the victims, and this is owing to the fact that this kind of an attempt is considered redundant. Transnational Corporations Transnational corporations (TNCs) are involved with a wide range of socially-injurious activities. Such kinds of corporate actions lead to there being several significant sociological queries. A certain category of these queries is regarding the conceptualising of such corporate hazards for reasons related to criminological research. There have been arguments presented that the idea of crime is just for referring to the criminal convictions and violations of criminal laws. Other propositions are that the conventional explanation of crime can be expanded and the other infringements of civil and regulatory law can be included in it, and also the infringements of certain criminal legislations. One more claim is that the state definitions are extremely limited and have an undue influence upon them of corporate power, and thus, they should be gotten rid of and replaced with broad social explanations of crime that have a basis on the ideas regarding human rights. Modern transnational corporations have acquired an increasing international reach and this leads to an aggravation of the troubles of “arriving at a satisfactory conception of corporate crime” (Michalowski & Kramer, 1987, p.34). frequently the TNCs are engaged with activities that, although may not be allowed in their own countries, are legitimate in several other host countries. It is the capability of the TNCs of being able to considerably influence the legal environment of the host nations that makes those certain laws of such countries to be not enough for studying corporate crime. TNCs have the ability of influencing the regulatory settings of the developing host countries both directly and indirectly. The reasoning behind the expansion in the free-market world brings about the necessity of the developing countries creating friendly settings for foreign investment. Re-Inventing Alien Conspiracy We are in such an era wherein the inception, prevention and results of the offences taking place have an effect, directly or indirectly, upon several nations (United Nations, 1995). Nevertheless, the official worries regarding transnational crime seem to be more focused upon the sense of susceptibility which the advanced nations have in regard to the criminal activities initiating from the other nations. This is the new version of the alien conspiracy theory and it has manifested itself due to the worry that the illegal items, which are said to be more harmful as compared to the ones that the developed nations manufacture, can have the possibility of destroying the nationals and the institutions of the advanced countries. If this view is considered, transnational crime is a novel phenomenon just for the way through which law-enforcement plus the other similar international agencies have lately recognized as being a main concern (Findlay, 1999). Official concerns tackle the trafficking of illegal drugs with particular intensity. This is to such an extent that transnational crime is almost coterminous with drug trade (Farer, 1999). Nevertheless, several commentators from the western nations are not able to consider the way a formerly existing pharmacological culture in the developed nations partially allowed a culture of illegal drug use to develop. Apart from this they also overlook the demands, since their concerns are majorly toward the foreign manufacturers and distributors. Migrants who build obstacles using their native lands are seen to be a danger to the national safety of the host nation. Therefore: “One factor that has led Colombia to become the centre of the cocaine production industry is the strength of its ties to a large immigrant community in the United States, which was established well before the drug trade was significant (Reuter & Petrie, 1998, p.20). Models and their Implications Lately there have been major failures in the anticipation of the development of organised crime in several locations, for example Mexico, Russia and China. Still, these failures provide encouragement and develop the more knowledgeable plus more refined models, which, if are made use of carefully and judiciously, can lead to a major initiating point for extrapolation and successful expectation of expansions later on. There are several manners through which the categorisation can be done of the current models or structures at the national and transnational levels. Altogether these models come under five groups: political, economic, social, strategic ad composite or hybrid. There are two varieties of models: the first three groups come under the category of models of conditions while the rest are in the models about the way in which there is the operation of organised crime. Entities Involved The main apparent reason behind transnational organised crime seems to be the increasing numbers and kinds of persons and groups going on to the developed nations. Due to the fact that such persons and groups reach there from various areas of the globe, and frequently from locations which have been experiencing conflict and turmoil, the common perception is that they are illegible, difficult to be controlled and cannot integrate. For instance, the belief is that these new comers, apart from coming there themselves also bring their social and commercial networks and this leads to problems in the enforcement of law. Simultaneously, there is more of the chances of a conspiracy. Therefore, concentration is not on similar problems that the law enforcers come across before the migrants had arrived, and neither on the commercial conspiracies that are present in that host nation much before the aliens enter it. Simply put it can be said that there is no importance given to the fact that the migrants discover such a social and institutional setting in the host nation which facilitates their illegal businesses. Together put, what they mean by transnational crime is not that the criminals are going across the boundaries but that the criminal activity is initiated in the developing nations and then it crosses over to the developed ones. As Lee wrote: “Organised crime in the post-cold-war era presents an array of complex and novel challenges to United States security interests” (Lee III, 1996, p.6). Victimization of Humans In the group of the illicit activities that are related to transnational organised crime comes trafficking in human beings. In fact this crime is quite paramount. In this regard there are various analyses brought about and several contradictory perspectives can be seen to be coming forward. Certain authors seemingly have this assumption that the conduction of human trafficking is by the structure enterprises who are involved with specialistic, long term activity. An implied connection with such a supposition is that such kinds of activities come under “organised crime” and that the persons involved with such activities are on job; they are “working”, full time, entrepreneurs who have had acquired talents and knowledge in this field and have been able to develop resources as well in the former illicit activities. On the other hand, there is the view that the several of the persons who participate in human trafficking have not been involved with criminal activities previously, and they are able to acquire the necessary skills by means of the licit setting of business wherein they have their operations (Bales, 1999). Herein the kind of persons who may be involved include travel agencies and transport companies; and they may be in collaboration with informal employment agencies. Normally the case is that none of the persons of the mentioned agencies and companies have had any criminal experience, nor do they have stable and organic association with the members of organised crime. However, when being in such a business of offending like the organised criminal groups, these companies may get involved with them and become their partners, without having shared their general culture or tactics. Such kinds of companies cannot be taken in the group of organised crime as it only leads to further confusion in the already confused analysis of such a kind of crime. There are other analyses which say that the traffickers usually have the control of illicit migrants following their arrival in the destination nation, and then they compel them in committing offences, getting engaged with prostitution or working for low salaries (Shelley, 1998). Another assumption is that recruitment of girls and women is done into their nation and they are told that they would be given work in a foreign land; however, they are forcibly made prostitutes. Lastly, the view is that the illicit migrants making use of the facilities of traffickers come across debt bondage and also that, along with the transportation, the smugglers take particularly high charges for second-rate, deserted or even condemned residences. Thus, due to the debts the immigrants have to work in sweatshops (Reuter & Petrie, 1998). Alternative Concerns The members of transnational crime are able to advantage from the variances that exist in the legislation and thus they are able to move across the borders having the view that they would exploit the normative loopholes plus the inconsistencies that exist. This fact delivers a great amount of official worry. Thus, “criminal groups spread into sectors where the risk of being arrested and heavily sentenced is relatively low, especially compared to the attractive economic return” (Adamoli et al., 1998, p.ix). There are requirements of actions that would lead to a reduction of these types of normative inconsistencies and would at the same time reduce the mobility of transnational organised groups. Among the very common actions taken is the formation of intra-national pieces of legislation. This is taken together with the set up of joint working groups and collaboration amongst the law enforcement programs. Such a type of action taken, that requires a coordination of the police forces from the different nations throughout the globe of their attempts, can lead to the set up of networks and practices of technical and political treaties that may not come under notice of the democratic power of national states as well as international groups. There may be an exploitation of the fear of a powerful threat that the transnational organised crime poses and the exploitation may be done while having the view of cutting normative corners and getting rid of the civil rights (Sheptycki, 1996). One example of this may be the taken from the intra-state unisons between the law enforces in the Europol and Trevi group. These happened without the European Commission actively participating in it and incapability on the part of the European Parliament. An addition to the list of concerns is that conventionally, the end result of transnational organised crime is the creation of a demand for smuggled goods that have been gotten into the market. An example here is that of smuggled cigarettes; this business was initiated in the Mediterranean countries in the 1950s and it led to such a phenomenal success of the American cigarette brands while at the same time there was the reduction in the national products. The common agreed upon opinion is that transnational organised crime results from novel criminal opportunities. Nevertheless, the kind of opportunities that these are, and what their characteristics are, should be briefly examined. In accordance with the distinction that has been suggested by Albanese (1999), there are opportunities that lead to easy access for earning illegally and without having a great degree of risk, and there are also opportunities created by the offenders. The first kind consists of providing illegal items and facilities which have a great demand, but there are also opportunities which come in the forefront through the social and technological modifications. For example, there are the protection rackets and frauds taking into their work the legal business enterprises. “Transnational organised crime seizes ‘easy’ opportunities and ‘creates’ new ones at the same time” (Ruggiero, 2000, p.196). it has such a modus operandi that the criminal activities acquires more and more of interdependency and versatility. The criminals acquiring skills from a certain area make use of them in some other field and there are partnerships with various actors, no matter whether they are legal or not. Such a transition from one activity toward another, essentially, consists of an irregular movement from the fields that conventionally relate to organised crime to the fields that are the “traditional preserve of white collar or corporate crime” (Ruggiero, 2000, p.196). Briefly, transnational organised crime does not have certain characteristics that the transnational white collar crime has; for instance in the case of legal corporations that bribe the foreign authorities to allow them to market their goods in the nations where those goods are prohibited (Passas, 1996). The idea of transnational crime summarizes such a mixture of criminal behaviour, and this can be a cause behind severe worry. Conclusion Ruggiero (2000) has suggested that transnational organised crime results in an increased set up of criminal alliances. Such alliances are made up of white collar and the traditional criminal activities. There have been suggestions that such kind of a crime has more danger attached to it as compared to the others, this cannot be taken as a fact due to there being contradictory evidence. It is necessary that analogous forms of corporate injury are included if there has to be an actual development in the definitional research field. A very important part of any kind of established query regarding the relevance of meaning to corporate behaviour is relative examination of the procedures whereby certain corporate injuries are chosen to be controlled and the others are explained as being suitable or essential results of economic activities. Studying the injurious activities performed by TNCs can lead to a considerable contribution toward the definitional paradigm in corporate crime studies; however, this would be so just in the case of our conceptualisations not prohibiting us from investigating into the procedures through which certain kinds of corporate harms have been explained as being transgressive at a national or international level, while others have not. The general suggestion is that the researchers who have an interest in the investigation of corporate crime by the TNCs should be maintaining an obvious difference among the behavioural and definitional research fields, identify the restrictions that are there for legal criteria for the setting of the scale of research, and expand the current structures so as to consist also of both the infringements of global standards of corporate behaviour plus each of the analogous types of corporate wrongdoing. References Adamoli, S., Di Nicola, A., Savona, E. & Zoffi, P. (1998) Organised Crime Around the World. European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control: Helsinki. Bales, K. (1999) Disposable People New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Farer, T. (Ed.) (1999) Transnational Crime in the Americas. New York: Routledge. Findlay, M. (1999) The Globalisation of Crime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee III, R.W. (1999) Transnational crime: an overview. In (Farer, T., Ed.).Transnational Crime in the Americas. New York: Routledge. Michalowski, R. J. & Kramer, R. C. (1987). Passas, N. (1996). The genesis of the BCCI scandal. Journal of Law and Society. 23, 57-72. Reuter, P. & Petrie, C. (Eds) (1998) Transnational Organised Crime. Washington: National Academy Press. Ruggiero, V. (2000). Transnational crime: Official and alternative fears. International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 28: 187-199 Sheptycki, J. (1996) Transnational Policing and the Makings of a Postmodern State. British Journal of Criminology. 34, 613-635. United Nations (1995) Fourth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems. Vienna: United Nations. Read More