criminologists-from-the-united-states

"Increasingly, our large corporations have been abusing the awesome power that they have amassed. [...] This abuse of power shows itself in many ways. Particularly disturbing have been the efforts of the corporations to conscript the political process for their own benefit through their large financial contributions, both legal and illegal. Although corporate political influence became more pronounced under President Ronald Reagan, it has long exercised a heavy hand over the , the Congress, and the state governments. Former top corporate executives often hold many of the most powerful cabinet and top agency positions in the executive branch of government. Politicians listen when large corporations speak. They have enormous advantages in influencing political decision-makers."

"No abuse of power has so tarnished the corporate image or shown the need for government legislation as the numerous public revelations of wholesale political and foreign bribery that came to light during the 1970s. These revelations are one of the most sordid chapters in American corporate history. Investigations revealed widespread illegal corporate political contributions and extensive bribery of foreign government officials. When the bribes were large, they significantly distorted the corporation's actual financial picture, thus misleading company stockholders as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the . When U.S. corporations bribe officials of developing countries, they may help to undermine that country's political stability and in some cases contribute to the spread of anti-American feeling. A particularly serious situation develops when pharmaceutical corporations bribe health officials in other countries to obtain permission to sell dangerous drug products."

"Sadism has even found a prominent position in popular culture.Many prime-time television series now owe their staying power to the sadistic impulses they exploit on the tube. Audience members find tremendous enjoyment in viewing horrified contestants who devour worms and insects on NBC’s Fear Factor; Donald Trump who exclaims without nuance, “You’re fired” on his wildly popular series, The Apprentice..."

"Certain guns have a reputation of being especially deadly. They would be the weapons of choice. Contrary to popular belief that these are guys who go berserk, they tend to be well-planned executions. They plan what they are going to wear and what weapons to bring."

"In the status game, then, the working-class child starts out with a handicap and, to the extent that he cares what the middle-class persons think of him or has internalised the dominant middle-class attitudes toward social class position, he may be expected to feel some 'shame'."

"A comparative social science requires a generalized system of concepts which will enable the scientific observer to compare and contrast large bodies of concretely different social phenomena in consistent terms."

"In his book Delinquent Boys (1955) Cohen was concerned to answer a number of questions about delinquency that he felt were not satisfactorily dealt with by Merton's strain theory. These questions sought to investigate:"

"A learned man, Emile Durkheim,"

"We usually assume that when people steal things, they steal because they want them. They may want them because they can eat them, wear them or otherwise use them; or because they can sell them; or even-if we are given to a psychoanalytic turn of mind because on some deep symbolic level they substitute or stand for something unconsciously desired but forbidden. All of these explanations have this in common, that they assume that the stealing is a means to an end, namely, the possession of some object of value, and that it is, in this sense, rational and utilitarian. However, the fact cannot be blinked-and this fact is of crucial importance in defining our problem-that much gang stealing has no such motivation at all."

"It is generally assumed that... register data are more representative than court data, which are the result of a long selective process of complaint, arrest, arraignment and prosecution."