Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T17:20:47.413Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Corporate Homicide: Definitional Processes in the Creation of Deviance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Victoria Lynn Swigert  and
Ronald A. Farrell
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

A conception of corporate behavior as criminal has entered the scientific and popular vocabulary. This has been accompanied by an expansion of common law to include the activities of corporations. The definitional change is exemplified by the indictment and trial of Ford Motor Company on charges of reckless homicide. The present work focuses on the history of events surrounding this precedent action. Using information from media accounts, it explores the definitional processes by which the world's second largest automobile manufacturer was indicted as criminal. Content analysis of these reports suggests that the expansion of legal parameters to include formerly exempt behavior was preceded by the development of a vocabulary of deviance, personalization of harm, and attributions of nonrepentance to the offender. Public reevaluation of corporate actors and actions in terms of a vocabulary previously reserved for conventional criminality, the transformation of the definition from one of product defect and diffuse consumer cost to one of personal injury, and depiction of the corporation as refusing to recognize the harms associated with its acts, it is argued, opened the way to the application of criminal statutes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , 1981 , pp. 161 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 The Law and Society Association

References

References

American Jurisprudence, 2d (1965) Corporations. Rochester, N.Y.: The Lawyers Co-Operative Publishing Co.Google Scholar
ANDERSON, Jack and Les, WHITTEN (1976) “Auto Maker Shuns Safer Gas Tank,” The Washington Post, December 30, 1976: B7.Google Scholar
BALL, Harry V. and Lawrence M., FRIEDMAN (1965) “The Use of Criminal Sanctions in the Enforcement of Economic Legislation: A Sociological View,” 17 Stanford Law Review 197.Google Scholar
BODINE, Larry (1980) “Prosecutors Undeterred by Pinto Acquittal; Defense Bar Says It's in Driver's Seat Now,” 29(2) National Law Journal 3.Google Scholar
CHAMBUSS, William J. and Robert B., SEIDMAN (1971) Law, Order, and Power. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
CLARK, Glenn A. (1979) “Corporate Homicide: A New Assault on Corporate Decision-Making,” 54 Notre Dame Lawyer 911.Google Scholar
COLEMAN, James S. (1974) Power and the Structure of Society. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
DOUGLAS, Jack D. and John M., JOHNSON (1977) Official Deviance: Readings in Malfeasance, Misfeasance, and Other Forms of Corruption. Philadelphia: Lippincott.Google Scholar
DOWIE, Mark (1977) “Pinto Madness,” 2 Mother Jones 18 (September).Google Scholar
DURKHEIM, Emile (1904) The Rules of Sociological Method. Trans, by Sarah A. Solovay and John A. Mueller, ed. by George E. G. Catlin. N.Y.: Macmillan.Google Scholar
EDGERTON, Henry W. (1927) “Corporate Criminal Responsibility,” 36 Yale Law Journal 827.Google Scholar
EPSTEIN, Richard A. (1980) “Is Pinto a Criminal?” 4 Regulation 15.Google Scholar
ERIKSON, Kai T. (1966) Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance. N.Y.: John Wiley.Google Scholar
ERMANN, M. David and Richard J., LUNDMAN (1978) Corporate and Governmental Deviance: Problems of Organizational Behavior in Contemporary Society. N.Y.: Oxford.Google Scholar
FRIEDMAN, Howard (1979) “Some Reflections on the Corporation as Criminal Defendant,” 55 Notre Dame Lawyer 173.Google Scholar
GEIS, Gilbert (1972) “Criminal Penalties for Corporate Criminals,” 8 Criminal Law Bulletin 377.Google Scholar
GERTH, Hans H. and C. Wright, MILLS (1958) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. N.Y.: Oxford.Google Scholar
GUSFIELD, Joseph R. (1967) “Moral Passage: The Symbolic Process in Public Designations of Deviance,” 15 Social Problems 175.Google Scholar
HALL, Jerome (1952) Theft, Law, and Society. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
HARRIS, Anthony R. (1977) “Sex and Theories of Deviance: Toward a Functional Theory of Deviant Type-Scripts,” 42 American Sociological Review 3.Google Scholar
HARRIS, Roy Jr. (February 15, 1978) “Jury in Pinto Crash Case: ‘We Wanted Ford to Take Notice,‘” The Washington Post A2.Google Scholar
JAMES, Philip S. (1976) Introduction to English Law. London: Butterworths.Google Scholar
JOHNSON, John M. and Jack D., DOUGLAS (1978) Crime at the Top: Deviance in Business and the Professions. Philadelphia: Lippincott.Google Scholar
KRAMER, Larry (1978a) “Ford Sees Cause for Concern on Pintos,” The Washington Post, August 26, 1978: D8.Google Scholar
KRAMER, Larry (1978b) “Nader: Vega's Gas Tank as Dangerous as Pinto's,” The Washington Post, August 31, 1978: D5.Google Scholar
KRAMER, Larry (1978c) “Jury Indicts Ford in Indiana Pinto Crash,” The Washington Post, September 14, 1978: CI.Google Scholar
KRAMER, Larry and Charles S., ROWE Jr. (1978) “Nader Hits Ford on Recall,” The Washington Post, August 22, 1978: B3.Google Scholar
McNEIL, Kenneth and Edmond, MINIHAN (1977) “Regulation of Medical Devices and Organizational Behavior in Hospitals,” 22 Administrative Science Quarterly 475.Google Scholar
MORRIS, Wilson (1978) “Ford Agrees to Pay $600,000 to Boy in Pinto Crash,” The Washington Post, August 25, 1978: A3.Google Scholar
NADER, Ralph and Mark J., GREEN (1973) Corporate Power in America. N.Y.: Grossman.Google Scholar
Opinion Research Corporation (1975) “Anti-Business Sentiment Remains at an All-Time High” Public Opinion Index, Report to Management, Vol. 33, No. 24.Google Scholar
QUINNEY, Richard (1970) The Social Reality of Crime. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
SINCLAIR, Upton Beall (1905) The Jungle. N.Y.: Vanguard.Google Scholar
STONE, Christopher D. (1975) Where the Law Ends: The Social Control of Corporate Behavior. N.Y.: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
STUART, Reginald (1978) “Pintos Withdrawn in Oregon in Dispute Over Tank Safety,” The New York Times, April 21, 1978: D3.Google Scholar
SUTHERLAND, Edwin H. (1940) “White-Collar Criminality,” 5 American Sociological Review 1.Google Scholar
SUTHERLAND, Edwin H. (1945) “Is ‘White Collar Crime’ Crime?” 10 American Sociological Review 132.Google Scholar
SUTHERLAND, Edwin H. (1949) White Collar Crime. N.Y.: Dryden Press.Google Scholar
UPHAM, Frank R. (1976) “Litigation and Moral Consciousness in Japan: An Interpretive Analysis of Four Japanese Pollution Suits,” 10 Law & Society Review 579.Google Scholar
The Washington Post (1978a) “Youth Awarded $128 Million in Car Explosion,” The Washington Post, February 8, 1978: A22.Google Scholar
UPHAM, Frank R. (1978b) “Grand Jury Pinto Probe,” The Washington Post, September 8, 1978: F2.Google Scholar
Yale Law Journal (1961) “Note: Increasing Community Control over Corporate Crime—A Problem in the Law of Sanctions,” 71 Yale Law Journal 280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UPHAM, Frank R. (1979) “Note: Structural Crime and Institutional Rehabilitation: A New Approach to Corporate Sentencing,” 89 Yale Law Journal 353.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

People v. Ebasco Services, Inc., 77 Misc. 2d 784, 354 NYS 2d, 1974.Google Scholar
People v. Rochester Railway and Light Company, 195 NY 102, 107, 1909.Google Scholar
State v. Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, 90 NJL 372, 103 A 685, 1917.Google Scholar
U.S. v. Van Schaick, 134 F 592, 1904.Google Scholar