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Public Support for Getting Tough on Corporate CrimeRacial and Political Divides

James D. UnneverUniversity of South Florida–SarasotaMichael L. BensonFrancis T. CullenUniversity of Cincinnati, OH

The recent wave of corporate wrongdoing has raised the issue of whether thepublic is concerned about the control of lawlessness in the business world.Using a national probability sample, we explore whether Americans want toenact stricter regulations of the stock market and advocate more punitivecriminal sanctions for corporate executives who conceal their company’s truefinancial condition. The findings reveal that Americans generally favor get-ting tough on corporate illegality. The analysis also indicates, however, thatgroup differences exist in public support for punitive corporate crime controlpolicies. Although liberals and conservatives equally support punishing cor-porate criminals more harshly, African Americans are more likely thanWhites to endorse more restrictive and more punitive policies toward corpo-rate criminals. We conclude that punitive attitudes are socially constructedbeliefs that reflect the dynamics of conflicted class and racial relations.

Keywords: public opinion; race and political orientation; corporate crime

Since the inception of crime-related opinion polls, an important issue hasbeen to understand why some Americans hold more punitive attitudes

regarding crime control than others (Beckett and Sasson 2000; Cullen, Fisher,and Applegate 2000; Roberts and Hough 2005; Roberts and Stalans 2000). Inrecent years, this line of research has taken on particular urgency as the UnitedStates has adopted ever more punitive crime control policies. Indeed, since the 1980s, the United States has waged a “war on crime”—a development var-iously held to manifest a “penal harm movement” (Clear 1994), a “prisonexperiment” (Currie 1998), a “culture of control” (Garland 2001), “penal pop-ulism” (Roberts et al. 2003), and “harsh justice” (Whitman 2003).

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The war on crime that was launched in the 1980s, however, was notdirected with equal vigor at corporate crime. As Simon (2006) notes, dur-ing the Reagan administration, funding designated for prosecuting corpo-rate crime by the U.S. Department of Justice was reduced. This lack ofattention on corporate crime was not new. As Sutherland (1949) noted, adistinguishing feature of corporate crime is the differential implementationof the criminal law. Whereas so-called ordinary street crimes are handledalmost exclusively within the criminal justice system, it is no secret thatviolations of law by corporations have traditionally been dealt with via civilor regulatory proceedings. The reasons for this differential enforcement arehistorically complex. In part, however, they reflect the belief among somepolicymakers and economic theorists that free markets are self-correcting.Using the criminal law to control harmful corporate behavior is inefficientand would only get in the way of this built-in self-regulating mechanism(Pontell 2005). Opposing this point of view are those who believe that gov-ernment controls, either in the form of regulations or criminal laws, are nec-essary and appropriate (Snider 1990).

Throughout the history of the United States the popularity of these differ-ing viewpoints—free markets, government regulations, or criminal laws—asmeans of controlling harmful corporate behavior has fluctuated. The 1980sinaugurated a period of deregulation, but the deregulation of the 1980s and1990s had been preceded by expansions of regulations in the 1960s and1970s. In addition, since the 1970s a social movement against white-collarcrime has been evident, which has resulted in increased use of the criminallaw against corporations (for a recent review, see Cullen et al. 2006).

The growth of regulation and criminal laws directed at business oftenfollows a three-step pattern of scandal, outcry, and response. First, a scan-dal of some sort is discovered. This provokes the second step—public outcry demanding governmental action—that is followed by the thirdstep—some sort of governmental action, either a showcase prosecution ormore importantly new laws and regulations. We believe that the UnitedStates is undergoing such a scenario now. The first phase of the process—the discovery of a scandal—has been well-documented and extensivelypublicized.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the United States has been inthe midst of what the U.S. General Accounting Office (U.S. GAO) haslabeled a “wave” of corporate scandals. These scandals involve massivecorporate financial fraud, which the U.S. GAO (2005:1) defines as “crimi-nal activity involving various types of unlawful, nonviolent conduct com-mitted by corporations, individuals, or both, including theft or fraud and

164 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency



other violations of trust, for example, securities fraud and financial institu-tion fraud.” Among the more prominent offenders are such large corpora-tions as Halliburton, Lucent, Xerox, Rite Aid, Cendant, Sunbeam, WasteManagement, Enron Corporation, Global Crossing, K-Mart, WorldCom,Adelphia, Xerox, and Tyco (Simon 2006). The financial costs of thesefrauds have been enormous. The collapse of Enron alone resulted inapproximately US$70 billion in lost market capitalization and devastatedthousands of investors, pensioners, and employees. Similarly, the WorldComcollapse is the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Furthermore, a U.S. GAO (2002) report commissioned to investigaterestatements of corporate financial statements found that about 10 percent ofall listed companies announced at least one restatement because of account-ing irregularities and that the number of restatements increased approxi-mately 145 percent between January 1997 and June 2002. The allegedfinancial frauds committed by Enron, WorldCom, Qwest, Tyco, and GlobalCrossing, by themselves, are estimated to total about US$460 billion (Rezaee2005). As a point of comparison, the annual loss for larceny-theft was esti-mated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (2005:52) to be US$5.1 billion.Needless to say, the media attention on these corporate crime cases and theiraftermaths has been enormous.

In light of this recent wave of corporate crime, it is important to assess thecurrent state of American public opinion about the control of corporate wrong-doings. Public sentiments are potentially important in shaping crime controlpolicy (Roberts et al. 2003). Indeed, scholars have argued that the legitimacyof the criminal justice system can be undermined if the government fails torespond to well-publicized corporate crimes that result in multitudes ofharmed victims (Moore and Mills 1990). This can be particularly true if thesecrimes occur when the public is expressing sentiments that something shouldbe done to stop an emerging crime wave of corporate offending.

Policymakers have argued that the public holds relatively benign opinionstoward white-collar crime, including behaviors that occurred in “corporatesuites.” For example, the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice (1968:158) concluded that: “the public tends to beindifferent to business crime or even to sympathize with the offenders who havebeen caught.” Researchers, however, questioned the accuracy of this depictionand took on the task of assessing public sentiments toward corporate crime(Braithwaite 1982; Cullen et al. 1983; Cullen, Link, and Polanzi 1982; Frank et al. 1989; Hans and Ermann 1989; for a summary, see Evans, Cullen, andDubeck 1993). Different methods were used to probe citizens’attitudes, includ-ing rankings of crime seriousness, preferred sentencing recommendations, and

Unnever et al. / Corporate Crime 165



assessments of vignettes. Regardless of the research design, the public dis-played a surprising willingness to sanction corporate crime, especially whenthe harm was perceived as high. What remains unclear, however, is the extentto which this consensus has remained intact after the turn of the twenty-firstcentury. There is an emerging understanding that the public continues to viewwhite-collar offenses as relatively serious and worthy of punishment (Kane andWall 2006; Piquero, Carmichael, and Piquero forthcoming; Schoepfer,Carmichael, and Piquero 2007). Still, the extant research remains slim and inneed of further investigation.

To help fill this void, we use a national probability sample conducted in2002 to examine two policies related to corporate crime control. First, weinvestigate the degree to which Americans support greater regulation of thestock market, which has served as a conduit for many financial frauds.Second, we investigate the degree to which Americans want stricter penalties,including longer prison terms, for corporate executives who conceal theircompany’s true financial condition. These analyses thus reveals the degreeto which Americans support social reforms that address the root causes ofcorporate crime (e.g., further regulating the stock market) and whether theyendorse punishing corporate criminals more severely.

Most importantly, we attempt to advance the extant research by examiningnot only general attitudes toward corporate crime control policy, but also howthese opinions are affected by political orientation and race. These factors aretwo of the most salient predictors of public policy attitudes. They often createa wide policy gap in how members of these groups “see the world,” especiallyin regards to crime control (Unnever forthcoming). Given the dearth of previ-ous research, however, it is not clear how political orientation—liberals versusconservatives—and race are related to corporate crime control.

There are fundamental differences between how liberals and conserva-tives want to solve entrenched social problems such as crime. In general,conservatives favor punitive policies, including mass incarceration, that tar-get “irresponsible” criminals, whereas liberals want to attack the root causesof crime (Beckett and Sasson 2000; Jacobs and Carmichael 2002). We assesswhether this “political divide” is reproduced in attitudes toward the controlof corporate criminals. As we argue below, there are reasons to believe thatit is not and that the roles will actually be reversed. Accordingly, we providean empirical test of the “switch hypothesis” put forward by Zimring andHawkins (1978).

Similarly, we explore whether the “racial divide” in support for punitivecrime control policies—that is particularly evident in public support for thedeath penalty—is also reproduced in American attitudes toward the punishment




of corporate criminals (Cochran and Chamlin 2006). African Americans gen-erally endorse less punitive responses to street crime than Whites, but is thisdivide replicated with respect to corporate crime? We use comparative conflicttheory to inform this analysis (see Hagan, Shedd, and Payne 2005).

Political and Racial Divides

As a prelude to our empirical investigation, we examine the potential rela-tionship between attitudes toward corporate crime control and political orien-tation and race. We return to these conceptual issues in the discussion section.

Political Orientation and Corporate Crime Control

Attribution theory suggests there should be a strong positive associationbetween political conservatism and support for punitive correctional policies.Jacobs and Carmichael (2002) argue that politically conservative beliefs areconsistent with a dispositional attribution style. Conservatives see offendersas autonomous and rational individuals who are responsible for their acts andtherefore deserve to be punished for choosing to engage in criminal behavior;for conservatives, crime is a “state of mind” (Grasmick and McGill 1994;Tonry 1999; Unnever and Cullen 2006). Jacobs and Carmichael (2002) alsocontend that conservatives justify their punitive attitude because they believethat criminals are unlikely to be rehabilitated. Thus, political conservativesbelieve that pernicious and incorrigible offenders must be punished severelyto ensure that they no longer can harm the innocent (Jacobs and Carmichael2002). On the other hand, liberals share a situational attribution style, believ-ing that crime is influenced by circumstances beyond the individual’s control.That is, the cause of crime is external to the individual. Consequently, liber-als assert that criminals are redeemable and should be afforded the opportu-nity to rehabilitate themselves (Applegate et al. 2000; Grasmick and McGill1994). Liberals generally oppose punitive responses to crime because they donot alleviate the external root causes of criminal behavior (see, e.g., Unnever,Cullen, and Jones 2008).

Prior research appears to support these hypotheses when examining publicsentiments toward FBI index crime offending. It has consistently found thatindividuals who hold conservative political views are more likely to endorsepunitive solutions to controlling crime (Applegate et al. 2000; Borg 1997;Stack 2000, 2003; Unnever and Cullen 2005; Unnever, Cullen, and Fisher2005; Young 1992). For example, political conservatives are more likely to




support the use of the death penalty for both adults and juveniles (Moon et al.2000; Vogel and Vogel 2003).

But how should conservatives and liberals feel about crimes committedin corporate settings? Because there is little debate that corporate criminalsare rational calculators (Paternoster and Simpson 2002), one might expectthat conservatives would favor policies that increase the likelihood of cor-porate criminals being arrested and harshly punished. Conservatives shouldbelieve that the most efficacious way to deter corporate wrongdoing isthrough stricter and more punitive crime control policies. These beliefswould be consistent with their view that crime is a product of rationalchoice and that such choices deserve to be punished and may be deterred ifappropriately sanctioned. On the other hand, do liberals—with their softerstance on punishment—also believe that corporate criminals areredeemable and, therefore, do not deserve to be punished to the fullestextent of the law? Do they also believe that the best way to deter corporatecrime is by expunging its root causes?

Scholars have clearly outlined potential root causes of corporate crime.For example, Young (1986:15) argues that:

Capitalism also provides the dynamics in which corporate crime thrives.Considerations of life style, animosity at employers, financial crises, as wellas an insatiable drive for private accumulation drives otherwise decent peopleto violate the trust of the office or job they hold or professional service theyoffer. Doctors, lawyers, secretaries, professors and police alike violate thetrust accorded them by others.

If liberals really do think that corporate crime has root causes that lie out-side the individual, then one would expect them to be less punitive thantheir more conservative counterparts.

However, Zimring and Hawkins (1978:370–1) have noted there are“anomalous features within both the liberal and conservative ideologies.”They argue that liberals and conservatives switch positions when it comesto the causes and control of corporate crime rather than street crime.Conservatives, who ordinarily denounce criminal offenders as evil andmalevolent, tend to express sympathy for white-collar offenders and ques-tion whether their actions should even be called crimes. On the other hand,liberals, who ordinarily are empathetic toward criminal offenders,denounce the double standard by which white-collar offenses are trivializedand call for harsher treatment of these offenders under the criminal law. Wecall this argument the “switch hypothesis.”




Zimring and Hawkins (1978) quote a number of opinion leaders in the lib-eral and conservative camps who endorse these switched positions. However,they provide no data that support the argument that “rank and file” liberalsand conservatives “switch” their attitudes when considering corporate wrong-doing. Moreover, Zimring and Hawkins (1978) fail to articulate the nuancedreasons for why liberals and conservatives may “switch” when consideringcrime-related policies dealing with “street crime” versus “crimes that occurin the suites.” We contend that analyses of this theoretical gap may providerevealing insights into how Americans construct their attitudes toward puni-tive crime control policies.

Race and Corporate Crime Control

Comparative conflict theory. There is a growing amount of researchshowing that African Americans and Whites differ significantly in theiropinions about crime-related policies that target “street crimes.” There isevidence, for example, that African Americans are more likely than Whitesto perceive the criminal justice system as unjust (Buckler, Unnever, andCullen forthcoming; Hagan and Albonetti 1982; Hagan et al. 2005;Henderson et al. 1997; Roberts and Stalans 2000; Wortley, Hagan, andMacmillan 1997). Furthermore, one of the most consistent and robust find-ings in the literature is that African Americans are significantly less likelythan Whites to support punitive crime control measures targeting “streetcrime,” especially the use of the death penalty for convicted murderers(Baker, Lambert, and Jenkins 2005; Barkan and Cohn 1994; Bobo andJohnson 2004; Cochran and Chamlin 2006; Unnever and Cullen 2007a,2007b; Unnever, Cullen, and Jonson forthcoming).

Hagan et al.’s (2005) comparative conflict theory provides a usefulframework for understanding these racially structured differences in socialperceptions and expectations regarding the criminal justice system andcrime control policies—or what they term “cognitive landscapes” (see alsoSampson and Wilson 1995). According to comparative conflict theory, thecognitive landscape shared by African Americans is formed from their rel-ative position of subordination. Because of their subordinate position,African Americans have suffered from “a long history of public dishonorand ritualized humiliation” by Whites (Hagan et al. 2005:382). The role thatthe criminal justice has played in this degradation of African Americans iswell documented (Clarke 1998; Oshinsky 1996). The degradation ofAfrican Americans by Whites has manifested itself in many forms, but isperhaps most poignantly evident in the enactment and enforcement of Jim




Crow segregationist laws and by the lynching of over 1,000 African Americans(Ogletree 2002; Tolnay, Beck, and Massey 1992; Tolnay, Deane, and Beck1996; Unnever and Cullen 2007a).

Hagan et al. (2005) add that the subordination of African Americans by thecriminal justice system is still evident. Comparative conflict theory arguesthat in large cities, “there is an implicit racial gradient of relative subordina-tion” and that “African American youth are at heightened comparative risk ofjustice system surveillance, apprehension, and mistreatment” relative to otherminority groups and Whites (Hagan et al. 2005:399). It is not surprising, there-fore, that a “racial divide” exists in public opinion about crime-related issuestargeting “street crimes,” with African Americans having a much more skep-tical distrust of these punitive crime control measures than Whites. We pro-pose that this perspective will also have implications for understanding theracial divide in attitudes about corporate crime.

Racially subordinate position and corporate crime control attitudes. Itwould appear that two possibilities exist regarding the impact of race onviews toward the control of corporate illegality. First, it is possible that theracial divide that permeates public opinion about “street crimes” is replicatedwhen African Americans and Whites consider corporate crime. PerhapsAfrican Americans express less punitive opinions regardless of the type of crime. Scholars have reported that African Americans are less punitivebecause they endorse a situational attribution style, whereas Whites tend toadopt a dispositional style (Young 1992). Thus, African Americans are lesspunitive than Whites because they believe that crime is caused by externalsocial forces, while Whites attribute crime to individuals making “badchoices.” The differences in these attribution styles leads African Americansto support policies that get at the root causes of crime, such as high levels ofunemployment and underfunded schools, whereas Whites believe that morepunitive penalties should deter individuals from “choosing” to commit crime(Unnever et al. 2008). Thus, according to this line of reasoning, AfricanAmericans should be less likely to support a “get tough” approach to corpo-rate crime than Whites because of their divergent attribution styles.

A second possibility, however, can be derived from the core thesis ofcomparative conflict theory. This perspective would assert that the subordi-nate position of African Americans informs their perceptions of crime-related issues, including corporate crime. In this approach, AfricanAmericans and Whites have different “cognitive landscapes” that causeBlacks to be more punitive toward corporate crime. We suggest that, unliketheir view of most criminal justice policies, African Americans do not




perceive the criminalization of corporate behaviors and the rigorousenforcement of these laws as a racist means of oppressing Blacks. Thesepolicies would not be seen as part of the “long history of public dishonorand ritualized humiliation of African Americans by whites” (Hagan et al.2005:399).

This does not mean that the subordinate position of African Americansand their unique history with the criminal justice system do not inform theiropinions about corporate crime. Rather, we argue that these factors coalesceto cause African Americans to abandon their situational attribution style andinstead endorse a dispositional attribution style when they construct theiropinions about corporate crime. Thus, we theorize that African Americansshould adopt a more punitive attitude toward corporate crime than Whites.

We suggest that African Americans should endorse a more punitiveapproach to corporate crime than Whites because they have a different cog-nitive landscape than Whites. This cognitive landscape is rooted in the innu-merable racial injustices that African Americans have suffered at the handsof Whites, particularly racist acts committed by the criminal justice system.We also suggest that “racial typifications” influence the degree to whichboth African Americans and Whites endorse punitive attitudes. Clearly,the research has documented that the public associates “street crimes” withAfrican Americans, embracing the image of the so-called young, Black,male “super-predator” (DiIulio 1995; see Chiricos, Welch, and Gertz 2004;Peffley and Hurwitz 1998). Research further reveals that this racial typifica-tion of “street crimes” fuels the likelihood that “angry White men” who har-bor racial animus will support punitive policies that will disproportionatelyaffect African Americans (Hogan, Chiricos, and Gertz 2005; Unnever et al.2008). Indeed, Unnever and Cullen (2007b) report that White racial animusaccounts for a third of the racial divide in support for the death penalty (seealso Soss, Langbein, and Metelko 2003).

However, corporate crimes are not typically associated with AfricanAmericans; indeed, corporate criminals are disproportionately White(Benson and Kerley 2001; Weisburd et al. 1991). We suggest that the racialtypification of corporate crime—it being a “White upper-class crime”—mayhave a profound effect on how African Americans construct their opinionsabout whether it is appropriate to “get tough” on corporate illegalities.Furthermore, corporations may well be seen as part of the larger “White”power structure that victimizes minorities. Controlling these powerful actorsmay thus be seen as a way of avoiding further subordination.

It is consistent with comparative conflict theory to argue that the per-ceptions that African Americans have about corporate crime should be




fueled by two factors: (1) Their past and present encounters with racial dis-crimination, especially racist acts by the criminal justice system; and (2) bythe typification of corporate crime as a crime that is disproportionatelycommitted by Whites who occupy dominant positions in the class hierar-chy. These factors, acting in concert, may cause African Americans to per-ceive corporate crime with a different cognitive landscape than the oneemployed by most Whites.

It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that this cognitive landscape informsthe opinions that African Americans have about both corporate crime and streetcrimes. In short, we argue that the subordinate position of African Americansmay cause them to endorse a “get tough” approach to corporate crime as ameans of “striking back” at or limiting the power of Whites—those who dom-inate them. Thus, we suggest that the same cognitive landscape that causesAfrican Americans to distrust crime control policies targeting street crimes alsois related to them endorsing policies aimed at controlling corporate crimes.

Research on this issue is in short supply. However, in a sample of 741respondents from the Boston area, Miller, Rossi, and Simpson (1991) foundthat African Americans were more likely to rate a vignette involving a cor-porate crime more harshly than Whites. The current study thus builds onthis initial finding.

Methods

Data

The current project analyzes data that were generated from a poll, con-ducted July 11–15, 2002, by ABC News and The Washington Post. This pollis part of a continuing series of monthly surveys conducted by these agen-cies with the purpose of soliciting public opinion on a range of political andsocial issues. The universe included people aged 18 and over living in house-holds with telephones in the nation’s contiguous 48 states. The sampleincluded households in the continental United States that were selected viarandom digit dialing procedures to insure that all possible listed and unlistedphone numbers were included with equal probability of selection. Withinhouseholds, the respondent selected was the adult living in the householdwho last had a birthday and who was home at the time of the interview. Thesample included 1,512 respondents. The final data were weighted usingdemographic information from the Census to adjust for sampling and non-sampling deviations from population values. The respondents were classi-fied into one of 48 cells based on age, race, sex, and education. Weights wereassigned so that the proportion in each of these 48 cells matched the actual




population proportions according to the Census Bureau’s most recentCurrent Population Survey (ABC News/The Washington Post 2002). We usethe weighted sample in the analysis.

Dependent Variables

We analyze two dependent variables. These measures examine differentforms of corporate crime control policies. Table 1 shows the variables in ouranalyses, including variable names, coding categories, and descriptive statistics.


Table 1Coding of Variables

Standard Variable Coding and/or Range Mean Deviation

Dependent variablesRegulating stock market Scores range from 1 to 3 with higher

values indicating greater support for new regulations 1.78 .94

Stiffer penalties Scores range from 1 to 4 with larger values indicating more support for stiffer penalties 3.69 .64

Independent variablesConservative Scores range from 1 to 3 with higher

values indicating a more conservative political orientation 2.13 .74

African American 1 = African American, 0 = other .07 .26Covariates

Income Scores range from 1 = under $8,000to 10 = $100,000 or more 6.65 2.32

Employed 1 = employed full time, 0 = other .56 .49Financially hurt 1 = financially hurt, 0 = other .40 .49Age In years 45.59 15.55Male 1 = male, 0 = female .47 .49Education Scores range from 1 to 6 with larger

values indicating more education 4.10 1.13Urban Scores range from 1 (rural area) to 4

(large city) 2.52 1.02Southerner 1 = lives in South, 0 = other regions .35 .47Catholic 1 = Catholic, 0 = other .22 .41Conservative Protestant 1 = born-again or evangelical

Christian, 0 = other .43 .49Government trust A scale that ranges from 0 to 2 with

higher values indicating less trust 1.36 .76



Regulating the stock market. Our first dependent variable assesses thedegree to which Americans support efforts to control corporate wrongdoingvia policies that would affect the functioning of the economy. It is based onthe following question: “Do you think there should be more government reg-ulation of the stock market, less regulation, or should government regulationof the stock market stay as it is?” Responses were recoded so that higher val-ues indicate greater support for regulating the stock market. There werethree response categories: (1) less, (2) stay the same, and (3) more.

Stiffer penalties. Our second dependent variable measures the degree towhich Americans believe that corporate criminals need to be punished moreseverely. It is based on the following question: “Do you support or opposestricter penalties, including longer prison terms and higher fines, for corpo-rate executives who conceal their company’s true financial condition?” Theresponse categories were recoded so that higher values indicate greater sup-port for more serve penalties (1 = oppose strongly, 2 = oppose somewhat,3 = support somewhat, and 4 = support strongly).

Corporate crime encompasses many different types of offenses, rangingfrom those with only financial effects to those with more serious physicaland environmental consequences. Here, we focus on only one type: finan-cial fraud. This is a limitation of our analysis. It is possible that the resultscould differ by other types of corporate illegality, including crimes involv-ing violence (e.g., injuries from unlawful workplace hazards). Accordingly,further elaborations and tests of the current study may want to examineother types of corporate crime.

Independent Variables

Race. A focus of this project is whether there is a racial divide in supportfor a more punitive approach to controlling corporate crime. As noted, theprior literature on punitiveness indicates that African Americans are lesspunitive than Whites (Cochran and Chamlin 2006; Unnever and Cullen2007a). We constructed a binary variable (African American) to measurethe respondent’s race with African Americans coded 1 and Whites coded 0.1

Political orientation. As noted earlier, researchers have found that polit-ical orientation is one of the most robust and consistent predictors of puni-tiveness toward criminal offenders (Beckett and Sasson 2000). Our measureof political ideology is similar to the one used in prior research (Applegateet al. 2000; Borg 1997; Stack 2000, 2003; Unnever and Cullen 2005;




Unnever, Cullen, and Applegate 2005; Young 1992). The variable conserv-ative is based on the following question: “Would you say your views onmost political matters are liberal, moderate, or conservative?” Responseswere recoded so that larger values indicated a more conservative politicalorientation (1 = liberal, 2 = moderate, and 3 = conservative.). Those whoanswered “don’t think in those terms” or “no opinion” were deleted fromthe analysis.

Covariates

We control for a number of measures that could confound the relation-ship between our independent and dependent variables. These demographicand attitudinal variables have been identified as significant predictors ofpublic opinion.

Despite some conflicting findings, prior research suggests that attitudestoward crime control are not related to being a victim of traditional streetcrimes (e.g., assault and burglary) (Unnever, Cullen, and Fisher 2007). Theimpact of victimization with regard to corporate crime, however, awaitssystematic study. Prior research on white-collar crime victims clearlyshows that they are often frustrated and outraged by the lack of responsefrom public officials (Moore and Mills 1990). In the context of recent scan-dals, it is possible that individuals who were financially hurt by the fall instock prices may feel that they have been personally victimized by financialfraud and this may affect their attitudes toward corporate crime control.Hence, we control for this possibility. Financially hurt is based on the fol-lowing question: “Have you or anyone in your immediate family been hurtfinancially by the recent sharp drop in stock prices, or not?” Financiallyhurt is a binary variable with respondents who reported that they have beenhurt coded 1 versus those who have not been hurt coded 0.

As demographic controls, we include measures of the respondent’s age(age, measured in years) and gender (male) with males coded 1. Educationhas six categories ranging from 1 (eighth grade or less) to 6 (postgraduateeducation). Income has 10 categories that range from 1 (under $8,000) to 10($100,000 or more). Employed measures whether respondents wereemployed full time (coded 1) or not (coded 0). Urban controls for the size ofthe city where the respondent lives (1 = rural area, 2 = small town, 3 = sub-urb of a large city, and 4 = large city). Southern is a binary variable measur-ing whether the respondent lives in the South (1 = South, 0 = other).

We also control for two aspects of the respondent’s religious beliefs.Catholic is a binary variable with Catholics coded 1 and other religious




affiliations coded 0. We also control for whether the respondent self-identifiedas a born-again or evangelical Christian (Conservative Protestant, 1 = born-again or evangelical Christian, 0 = other).

Lastly, we created a scale based on two measures that assessed whetherrespondents approved or disapproved of the way that the U.S. Congress was doing its job and the way their representative to the U.S. House ofRepresentatives in Congress was handling his or her job. Scholars haveargued that Americans are less likely to support punitive crime control mea-sures if they do not trust the government (Unnever and Cullen 2005; Zimring2003; Zimring and Johnson 2006). Our scale, Government trust, sums acrosstwo questions both of which had a binary response of approve or disapprove.Higher values on the scale indicate greater disapproval of the government.The alpha coefficient for Government trust was .54.

Analytical Strategy

A cumulative logit model was used to analyze our two dependent vari-ables because each had ordinal categories. We replicated the results pre-sented in Table 3 using ordinal regression and ordinary least squares. Theresults were substantively the same.2 Standardized logistic regression coef-ficients are presented in Table 3. List-wise deletion of missing cases wasused. There was no indication of multicollinearity. An ordinary least squaresanalysis of the data showed that no variance inflation factor exceeded 1.36.The sample size for each regression equation is reported in Table 3.


Table 2Public Support for Controlling Corporate Crime

Public Support Percentage

Regulating the stock marketLess 58.7About the same 6.5More 34.8

Support for tougher penalties for corporate executivesOppose strongly 1.9Oppose somewhat 3.9Support somewhat 16.3Support strongly 77.7



Results

We first examine the degree to which Americans support a more restric-tive and punitive approach to controlling corporate crime (see Table 2). Tworelevant findings emerge. First, the frequencies reveal a lack of support forfurther regulating the stock market; only 34.8 percent reported that theysupported more regulation. Indeed, the majority of Americans, 58.7 per-cent, reported that they thought there should be less regulation of the stockmarket. However, the data replicate the findings of prior research in regardsto punishing corporate criminals more severely. A sizeable majority ofAmericans, 77.7 percent, strongly support stricter penalties, including longerprison terms and higher fines for corporate executives who conceal theircompany’s true financial condition. Only 6.5 percent of Americans either“oppose strongly” or “oppose somewhat” punishing corporate criminalsmore severely.


Table 3Analysis of Support for “Getting Tough” on Corporate Crime

(standardized logistic regression coefficients)

Model 1 Model 2

More Stock Stiffer More Stock Stiffer Variable Regulations Penalties Regulations Penalties

African American .129*** .149** .113** .155**Conservative — — −.092** .029Income .023 .133** .023 .136**Employed −.015 .132** −.019 .131**Financially hurt .089* .074 .086* .076Age .050 .197*** .052 .196***Male .045 .128** .044 .125**Education −.099* .053 −.102* .055Urban .074 −.055 .072 −.053Southerner .063 −.034 .070 −.032Catholic .063 −.014 .066 −.013Conservative Protestant −.030 −.091 −.011 −.098*Government trust −.075* .047 −.076 .045

Max-rescaled R square .059*** .013*** .082*** .104***(n = 890) (n = 900) (n = 886) (n = 896)

*** p < .001 ** p < .01 * p < .05 (two-tailed tests of significance).



Model 1 of Table 3 assesses whether African Americans and Whites havesignificantly different “cognitive landscapes” when considering whether thereshould be further government regulation of the stock market and the degree towhich corporate criminals should be punished more severely. The resultsreveal that African Americans and Whites differ significantly in their opinions.Notably, African Americans are significantly more likely than Whites to wantstricter government regulation of the stock market and longer prison sentencesand higher fines for corporate criminals while controlling for the other covari-ates. These findings are quite pronounced as the standardized regression coef-ficients indicate that race is the most substantive predictor of support for thesepolicies.

The analysis in model 1 omitted political orientation. It could be arguedthat any race effect is really a political orientation effect (i.e., becauseAfrican Americans are more liberal). In model 2 of Table 3, we includepolitical orientation in the regression equations. The results reveal that con-servatives are significantly less likely to endorse more government regula-tion of the stock market. However, the data also show that there is no“political divide” when conservatives and liberals consider whether corpo-rate criminals should be punished more severely. Liberals are as equallylikely to support “getting tough” on corporate crime as conservatives.

Comparing the results across models 1 and 2, the data indicate that polit-ical orientation does partially mediate the “gap” between African Americansand Whites in their opinions about stricter regulation of the stock market.Political orientation mediated nearly 14 percent of the racial divide inwhether the government should further regulate the stock market. However,the results also show that including political orientation in the regressionequation exacerbates the gap between African Americans and Whitesregarding whether corporate criminals should be punished more severely.Political orientation increased the likelihood that African Americans wouldbe more punitive than Whites.3

Discussion

America declared a war on crime in the 1980s—that is, a war on streetcrimes. To some segments of the American population, the “excesses” of lib-eral courts in the 1960s had created an atmosphere where street crime—gangviolence, juvenile murders—flourished and had to be curtailed (Beckett andSasson 2000; Coulter 2006). However, the United States did not embark on aparallel, equally vigorous war on corporate crime. Some have argued that this




failure to advance a second front on crime reflected the priorities of theAmerican public. Policymakers have argued that Americans do not want toget tough on corporate crime because they do not consider it serious. Or, thereis no need to get tough on corporate crime because free markets are self-cor-recting and new criminal laws would impede this built-in self-regulatingmechanism (Pontell 2005). Others, however, have questioned these assump-tions. Indeed, research conducted in the 1980s found that Americans by andlarge agree that corporate crime is serious and that it warrants the attention ofthe criminal justice system.4

Past research shows that Americans support harshly punishing corporatecriminals, but it does not address whether their support for corporate crimecontrol extended to tighter regulation of the stock market. Previous studieshave also failed to fully investigate whether Americans who support gettingtough on street crime, such as political conservatives, also express the samelevel of support for getting tough on corporate crime. The current projectaddressed these issues.

Do Americans Want to Control Corporations?

Our analysis revealed that Americans are conflicted in how they want tocontrol corporate crime. On the one hand, the data show that, with thenotable exception of African Americans, the general public does notstrongly support further regulating the stock market. This may well indicatethat most Americans have faith in capitalism and are generally reluctant toembrace the notion of increased government regulation. On the other hand,we also found that the consensus regarding the seriousness of corporatecrime that was first revealed in the 1980s remains intact; in 2002 the major-ity of Americans strongly supported stricter penalties, including longerprison terms and higher fines for corporate executives who conceal theircompany’s true financial condition. Taken together, these findings indicatethat, although Americans do not want the government to overly regulate thefree market, they do support efforts to deter corporate wrongdoing throughpunitive enforcement of laws banning fraudulent schemes.

These results thus suggest that the public views the financial scandals ofthe early twenty-first century through an internal or dispositional attributionlens. The public appears to fail to recognize that attenuated regulations maycause corporate fraud by allowing the opportunity for predatory financialactivities to emerge and to proceed unchecked (Paternoster and Simpson2002; Pontell 2005; Shover and Hochstetler 2005). Rather, in light of theoverwhelming support for harsher sanctions of corporate executives, it appears




that Americans think these scandals were primarily caused by the individ-ual failings or greed of executives. In other words, they were just crimescommitted by criminally motivated individuals and not indicators of anintrinsically flawed capitalistic system. From the perspective of attributiontheory, the widespread support for tougher penalties suggests that thepublic views corporate criminals as rational decision makers who should bepunitively held accountable for their crimes.

The question remains whether Americans are consistent in their punitiveattitudes across types of crimes (i.e., street versus corporate offenses). Ananalysis of our independent variables reveals that some Americans are con-sistent in their get tough attitudes. For example, research suggests that withregard to the control of street crime, males have a more punitive attitude thanfemales (Stack 2003; Yu and Zhang 2006). We found that males were sig-nificantly more likely than females to support harshly punishing corporatecriminals. Scholars have also posited that older Americans support punitivecorrectional policies (Yu and Zhang 2006). Our results indicated that olderAmericans were significantly more likely to support severely punishing cor-porate criminals. Notably, we found that individuals who self-identifiedthemselves as born-again or evangelical Christians were less likely to sup-port harsher sanctions for corporate criminals. This finding is not surprising.Scholars have found that born-again or evangelical Christians identify withthe belief that people are redeemable and therefore are significantly lesslikely to be punitive than the American public in general and more specifi-cally other Christian fundamentalists (Unnever and Cullen 2006).

Our results challenge existing theoretical explanations for why specificgroups within the United States support punitive crime control policies.Conflict theorists argue that more wealthy people support punitive correctionalpolicies because they function as a means of controlling threats that arise fromthe disenfranchised. Yet we found that wealthier Americans want corporatecriminals to be harshly punished—a threat that hardly arises from the lowerclass. Perhaps conflict theorists need to recognize that threats can arise from thedisenfranchised and from people who have high status positions. It certainlywould be consistent with conflict theory to argue that corporate crime, espe-cially in the grand scale of the Enron debacle, can create instability within mar-kets and, more generally, undermine public trust in corporate free markettransactions. Furthermore, on a more individual level, conflict theorists mayneed to recognize that wealthy individuals have a self-interest in seeing corpo-rate crime being rigorously pursued because they have the most to lose. Afterall, it is very likely that wealthy Americans suffer the most when corporationsare gutted and billions of dollars lost to financial fraud.




Is There a Political Divide?

We now turn to the issue of whether there is a “political divide” in sup-port for punitive policies targeting corporate crime. Crime is a definingissue that clearly demarcates liberals from conservatives. Prior researchconfirms that conservatives are more punitive than liberals with respect tostreet crime. Conservatives want tougher crime control legislation, morerigorous prosecution of criminal statutes, and harsher sentences (Coulter2006). Alternatively, liberals feel that these policies do not alleviate the rootcauses of crime. Political orientation thus is one of the most robust and con-sistent predictors of punitiveness. In short, prior studies indicate that liber-als and conservatives are not like-minded when it comes to the issue ofcrime (Jacobs and Carmichael 2002; Jacobs, Carmichael, and Kent 2005;Jacobs et al. 2007).

Our results indicate that when corporate illegality is considered—that is,“crimes of the powerful”—the association between political orientation andpunitive policies needs further specification. The data show that political ori-entation did not significantly predict greater support for “getting tough” oncorporate criminals: Liberals and conservatives equally support more severelypunishing corporate criminals. In fact, about three-fourths of both groupsstrongly supported the use of harsher penalties for corporate executives.

This finding suggests that liberals may have a more flexible and nuancedideology of crime control than conservatives. It also indicates that a liberal ide-ology of crime recognizes that different crimes may have different causes andconsequences. It appears that liberals do not consistently attribute all crime toexternal root causes. As noted by Zimring and Hawkins (1978), liberals con-sider the cause of crime to be external to the individual when the disenfran-chised—the poor and minorities—are involved. By contrast, our resultsindicate that liberals only partially extend this analysis to corporate crime.Although more inclined than conservatives to favor stock market regulation—a means of attacking root causes—liberals favor harsh criminal penalties formembers of the business elites. Thus, they appear to endorse an internal-dispositional attribution style when considering whether corporate executivesshould be harshly punished. Similar to conservatives, they are likely to see cor-porate criminal acts as the product of a “state of mind”—a case of individualsfreely choosing to engage in corporate crime who consequently deserve to beseverely punished. Furthermore, we suggest that liberals want corporate crim-inals severely punished because these offenders “symbolically” represent theexcesses of an unjust system of “White privilege” that they believe continuesto oppress those who justly deserve their empathy, the truly disadvantaged.




In sum, we found only partial support for the Zimring and Hawkins (1978)“switch hypothesis.” The results do not confirm Zimring and Hawkins’(1978) argument that conservatives express sympathy for corporate crimi-nals. Rather, the data indicate that the vast majority of conservatives supportincreasing the punishment of corporate criminals. The results also show thatliberals do not abandon their support for social reforms that address the rootcauses of crime. Liberals are more likely than conservatives to express sup-port for preventing corporate crime by further regulating the stock market.However, we did find support for the argument that liberals “switch” theirposition when considering whether corporate criminals should be punishedmore severely. Our data reveal that liberals, who ordinarily are empathetictoward criminal offenders, join with their more conservative counterpartsand call for the harsher treatment of corporate criminals.

Is There a Racial Divide?

The current project extends comparative conflict theory by examiningwhether African Americans and Whites have different “cognitive land-scapes” or “sensibilities” (Tonry 2004) when considering more restrictiveand punitive measures to control corporate crime—a topic largely ignoredby scholars. Consistent with this perspective, we found support for the con-clusion that the subordinate position of African Americans may causeBlacks to endorse a more restrictive and punitive approach to controllingcorporate crime than Whites. Our results indicate that African Americans aresignificantly more likely than Whites to support further regulation of thestock market and are more likely than Whites to support harshly punishingcorporate criminals while controlling for other covariates including theperson’s age, gender, level of education, income, whether he or she wasemployed full time, whether he or she has been financially hurt by investingin the stock market, his or her religious affiliation, residence, and the degreeto which he or she trusts the government.

We also investigated whether the “racial divide” in public opinion aboutcorporate crime results from African Americans and Whites endorsing dif-ferent political orientations. It is possible that the “cognitive landscapes”that define African Americans and Whites are grounded in them having dif-ferent political orientations, with Blacks usually endorsing a more “liberal”perspective on crime-related issues than Whites. We did find that the racialdivide in support for more government regulation of the stock market waspartially mediated by African Americans and Whites sharing a similar polit-ical worldview. However, our results also revealed that the racial divide in




support for longer prison sentences for corporate criminals became evenmore expansive after controlling for political orientation.

Comparative conflict theory thus sensitizes us to the potential role that racialsubordination and humiliation play in shaping African Americans’ sentimentstoward corporate criminals. In this regard, Fleury-Steiner (2002:573) arguesthat African Americans “clearly ‘see’ things differently than whites” and thatBlack opposition to punitiveness is a way for them to symbolically “resist whiteracism.” Thus, we suggest that the opinions that African Americans have aboutcorporate crime may reflect that they “see” these crimes through a differentracial lens than Whites—one that reflects their subordinate position. That is, apreponderance of African Americans may feel that they have always been onthe receiving end of punitive crime control policies and that their “cognitivelandscape” includes the adage: “What is good for the goose is good for the gan-der.” Getting tough on corporate crime, therefore, is an opportunity for AfricanAmericans to symbolically resist White racism by seeing that corporations andcorporate criminals—symbolic surrogates for White domination—are heldaccountable. After all, corporate crime, by definition, occurs among those withmore power and, therefore, disproportionately among those who have domi-nated them—that is, Whites.

In addition, African Americans may be particularly punitive toward cor-porate criminals because they have been historically denied the sameopportunities as others to achieve executive positions. Consequently, AfricanAmericans may be especially angered when they see people who they believedid not meritoriously achieve their positions—that is, corporate executives—violate the trust associated with their occupations. African Americans maybelieve that corporate executives who engage in criminal conduct are par-ticularly deserving of being punished because they first took advantage ofan unjust system and, second, used their position to illegally accumulateeven more ill-gotten goods. In short, African Americans may want toharshly punish corporate executives because they symbolically representthe excesses of an unjust system of White domination.

Overall, these findings suggest that an understanding of the “racial divide”in public opinion about crime-related issues must take into account the rela-tive positions of subordination and domination of African Americans andWhites. They also suggest that comparative conflict theory would profit byincluding how the characteristics of the crime and offender shape publicopinion about crime-related issues. This integration would be consistent withthe finding that individuals make dispositional or situational attributionsbased on the attributes of the offender (Thornton and Knox 2002).




Further elaborations of our research may wish to focus on discerning howa group’s historical legacy and their subordinate–dominant position interactwith the perceived class and race of the offender to create an image of a per-petrator that is more or less deserving of punishment. It may be that individu-als construct their opinions about which offenders are most deserving ofpunishment based on the degree to which the offender is similar to them—thatis, as it is interpreted through the lens of their historically contingent “cogni-tive landscape.” Thus, African Americans may want affluent powerful Whitemale corporate criminals to suffer the same “criminal injustices” as they have,whereas, conversely, upper-class White conservative males may feel that“street criminals” (i.e., poor Black males) threaten their value system—that is,people should profit through hard work rather than by engaging in crime and,therefore, deserve to be harshly punished. In short, our research suggests thatpunitive attitudes are socially constructed beliefs that reflect the dynamics ofconflicted class and racial relations.

Notes

1. In the analysis, Hispanics were included in the White category. To ensure that this didnot bias the results, we conducted the analysis with Whites as the comparison category versusAfrican Americans and Hispanics (treated separately). The findings revealed that AfricanAmericans were significantly different than Whites on both dependent variables. Hispanics,however, were not significantly different than Whites. Note that in their comparative conflicttheory, Hagan et al. (2005) predicted that there would be a gradient in perceptions of injustice,with African Americans and Whites at polar opposites and Hispanics in-between. At least withregard to punitive control of corporations, this does not appear to be the case.

2. The significance of one coefficient differed between using cumulative logistic regres-sion and ordinary least squares and it was when we analyzed the dependent variable stifferpenalties; government trust was not significant when using cumulative logistic regressionwhereas it was significant at the .02 level when using ordinary least squares. There were nodifferences in whether a variable attained statistical significance when comparing the resultsusing cumulative logistic regression with those generated when using an ordinal regressionprocedure.

3. We also tested whether the relationship between race and our dependent variables variesacross political orientation. The results from an analysis not reported here show that the inter-action term Black × Conservative significantly predicts both dependent variables. To explicatehow the relationship between race and support for further regulating the stock market variesacross political orientation, we split the sample into liberals and conservatives and reestimatedthe effect of race within each category while controlling for the other covariates. These resultsindicate that African American conservatives are substantively more likely than conservativeWhites to support further regulating the stock market as a means of controlling corporate crime.To further understand how the relationship between race and support for “getting tough” on cor-porate criminals varies across political orientation, we split the sample into liberals and con-servatives and reestimated the effect of race within each category while controlling for the other




covariates. Similar to the results regarding regulating the stock market, these results reveal thatAfrican American conservatives are substantively more likely than conservative Whites to sup-port having corporate criminals serve longer prison sentences and paying larger fines.

4. It also could be argued that the United States did not commit to a 1980s war on corpo-rate crime because of the difficulties inherently involved in prosecuting corporate crimes (foran analysis of the problems prosecuting attorneys confront, see Benson 2002; Benson andCullen 1998; Benson et al. 1998). In addition, scholars have argued that a punitive war on cor-porate crime based on just-deserts principles may generate a plethora of latent consequencesthat would not serve the general public such as bankrupting companies that provide essentialservices (e.g., pharmaceutical and utility companies) and undermining public and investortrust in corporations (Braithwaite 1982; Simpson 2002; U.S. GAO 2002). (Note that otherscholars have argued that a punitive approach toward controlling corporate crime is particu-larly warranted and would be a strong deterrent [e.g., see Geis 1978].) However, the U.S gov-ernment has recently moved in the direction of enhancing prosecutorial powers and providingjudges with more punitive sanctions. On July 30, 2002, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed(Public Law No. 107-204). This act authorized additional funding for the Securities andExchange Commission (SEC), strengthened corporate governance, and created more trans-parency in corporate accounting practices. It is also enhanced criminal sanctions (e.g., themaximum penalty for mail and wire fraud was increased from 5 to 10 years) and it criminal-ized additional behaviors (e.g., it created a crime for tampering with a record or otherwiseimpeding any official proceeding).

Scholars may wish to investigate whether a gap emerges between the “letter” and “spirit” ofthe Sarbanes-Oxley Act and, if so, they may want to explore the historical contingencies that gen-erate this discrepancy (Savelsberg 2002; Unnever and Higgins 1995). Data for this possible pro-ject may be generated from the two studies mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The act requiresthe SEC to complete two studies on violators and violations, including individuals and entities thathave and have not been charged, and enforcement actions involving financial report violationsimposed over the past 5 years (U.S. GAO 2002). However, the findings reported here rule out onepossibility for why a gap may emerge: It cannot be argued that Americans are unwilling to sup-port the rigorous prosecution and sentencing of corporate criminals.

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James D. Unnever is an associate professor of criminology at the University of SouthFlorida–Sarasota. His works have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Research inCrime and Delinquency, Social Forces, Social Problems, Criminology, and Justice Quarterly.His current research cross-nationally examines whether racial and ethnic intolerance predictsgreater support for the death penalty, whether perceived racial discrimination is related to crim-inal offending among African American juveniles using Hirschi’s Richmond Youth Project data,and whether empathy can theoretically explain individual differences in punitiveness.

Michael L. Benson is Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. He is cur-rently working on a book entitled, White-Collar Crime: An Opportunity Perspective, coau-thored with Sally S. Simpson. Previous books include Combating Corporate Crime, Crimeand the Life Course: An Introduction, There’s No Safe Place: Maltreatment of Patients inNursing Homes, Corporate Crime Under Attack, and Families, Crime and Criminal Justice.His current research is focused on neighborhood effects on intimate partner violence.

Francis T. Cullen is Distinguished Research Professor of Criminal Justice and Sociology at theUniversity of Cincinnati. His works include Reaffirming Rehabilitation, Combating CorporateCrime, Corporate Crime Under Attack, Rethinking Crime and Deviance Theory, Taking Stock:The Status of Criminological Theory, Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences, andCriminological Theory: Past to Present—Essential Readings. His current research focuses onthe impact of social support on crime, the measurement of sexual victimization, public opinionabout crime control, and rehabilitation as a correctional policy. He is a past president of boththe American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.




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