Corporate criminal careers: thinking about organizational offending over time

This article argues for the necessity of considering corporate crime through a criminal career framework. It begins by highlighting that the problems of corporate crime work to date. These relate to whether analysis should be focused on individuals or organizations, and the implication inherent to many explanations for corporate crime that different aspects of corporate offending share a single cause. This has led to seemingly contradictory conclusions about corporate crime being drawn, hampering attempts to develop explanations for its occurrence. A response to these issues involves a stronger focus on corporate offenders as recidivists and, consequently, a study of their offending over time. It is suggested that the criminal career approach is the best way to achieve this, as it allows for a conceptual sensitivity towards understanding corporate crime, pointing at how different elements of the corporate criminal career can be studied in isolation and focusing on offending over time. This is a necessary starting point for developing theories of corporate criminality. The article concludes by suggesting some ways a corporate criminal career approach might be developed