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The study of white-collar and corporate crime has long been focusing mainly on its economic consequences, due to its connection with legitimate professional and business activities. Yet, even since E.H. Sutherland’s seminal studies, there has been a lingering sense of the broader scope of harmful consequences of corporate crime. This essay focuses on the social ‘anomic’ harm related to an ingrained feature of abuse of trust, typical of corporate crimes, as well as the increasing awareness of the ever growing spread and negative impact on human life and health of offences falling under the definition of ‘corporate violence’.

The book is the result of an international research project on the topic of bribery and the private sector, and specifically on the role of compliance programs, under the auspices of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and involving the participation of an international team of prominent academic institutions, working under the coordination of the International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United Nations (ISPAC), and in cooperation with Eni. The goal for the project has been to design and make available a unique Anti-Bribery Compliance Model (an “ABC Model”), based on the results of a serious effort to integrate international best practice in anti-corruption policy with a new set of maximum standards drawn from a combination of empirical observation,concrete business experience, theoretical research and comparative analysis of legal systems and case law. The ABC Model published in this book has therefore been designed to serve as the most advanced set of guidelines for multinational companies in complying with anti-corruption laws, while also comprising a new benchmark for use by national legislators—endorsed by international institutions, and consistent with the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC)—in assessing the liability of corporations in the event of corruption.

Sketching some similarities between the thoughts of the great criminologist Edwin H. Sutherland and Cesare Beccaria’s, the well-known Enlightenment legal thinker, the essay stresses the harmful consequences of crimes by “the great and rich”, namely by the white-collar criminals. Such harm lies also in the so-called double standard of justice for white-collar crime and street crime respectively, which can be observed not only in legislator’s regulatory and sanctioning choices, but even in the different terminologies he adopts while coping with these two kinds of deviance. A particularly devastating aspect of corruption stems indeed from it often being perpetrated by offenders, to use Sutherland’s words, “of respectability and high social status”. Such features are well epitomized by the recent Italian episodes of “systemic” corruption. Systemic corruption is particularly elusive, because any attempt to crack down on it is bound to antagonize large sectors of the entrenched establishment. The decline in general institutional trust may reverberate to produce a diminution in the prestige of and confidence in the judiciary, leading to further complications in the prosecution of corruption. A more detailed analysis reveals the following features of corruption in Italy: (1) it is the result of highly rational choices by the persons involved; (2) it has flown from but not into a framework of stable and continuous relationships between public officials and private businesspersons; (3) it has been ”circular” in its effects and nature, as it expanded; (4) it has been extremely difficult to attack with the traditional tools of criminal justice since the obvious aim of the bribers and bribees is to carry out a secret transaction profitable for both. An adequate response to corruption should entail effective punishment for the criminals. There also is a need that, after having acted as whistleblowers, people could be preserved from the most fearsome sanction usually imposed again

The use of criminal law in environment protection and its limits are discussed. The way of alternative dispute resolution (including restorative justice and involvement of communities in devising regulation in the field) and of an overall "green managemente" is deemed promising and probably more effective than sheer recourse to punishment.

The use of criminal law in environment protection and its limits are discussed. The way of alternative dispute resolution (including restorative justice and involvement of communities in devising regulation in the field) and of an overall "green managemente" is deemed promising and probably more effective than sheer recourse to punishment.