Gregg Barak, Theft of a Nation: Wall Street Looting and Federal Regulatory Colluding
| Published date | 01 October 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474513501428 |
| Author | Paul R. Schupp |
| Date | 01 October 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
seeks to establish the ‘social truth’ of crime rather than a narrow legalistic inter-
pretation of events. Such an approach could be incorporated in a model of rec-
onciliatory justice which seeks to reconcile victim and offender to the harm that
has been caused. Drake regards such a justice model as superior to a restorative
justice model: first, because it is not owned or co-opted by the state which is itself
often responsible for perpetrating significant harms and, second, because it is real-
istic, recognizing that it may be impossible to restore people’s lives to how they
were before the harm was caused. It aims simply to determine the truth of what
occurred and to find ways of releasing both victim and offender from the harm
caused, helping them to move on with their lives. Ultimately, this is an inclusive
response to crime. It is certainly to be preferred to the exclusive responses fuelled
by the current neoliberal hegemony.
References
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Wipf and Stock.
Hallsworth S and Lea J (2011) Reconstructing Leviathan: Emerging contours of the
security state. Theoretical Criminology 15(2): 141–157.
Mathiesen T (2000) Prison on Trial. Winchester: Waterside Press.
Wacquant L (2009) Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Emma Bell
Universite
´de Savoie, France
Gregg Barak, Theft of a Nation: Wall Street Looting and Federal Regulatory Colluding, Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers: New York and London, 2012; 211 pp. (including index): 9781442207790,
$80.00 (cloth), $29.95 (pbk)
By now, everyone is likely aware that massive, pervasive Wall Street frauds
precipitated the Great Recession. Still, inasmuch as the popular and business
presses have shaped our understanding, many criminal justice and penal punish-
ment scholars have likely been left with the sense that the main story should be told
outside of our disciplinary purview, perhaps best left to scholars and practitioners
in fields such as financial services or politics. Indeed, both before and after the
Great Recession, regulatory officials and Wall Street advocates have shown little
enthusiasm for treating the perpetrators as criminals deserving of penal punishment
or finance crime as warranting a structurally reformed regime of state policing,
prosecuting, and punishment to prevent future frauds.
In fact, the failure of the federal regulatory state to relate to contemporary
finance capital as a field of criminality requiring penal intervention is critically
important to understand what happened and evaluate the federal regulatory
426 Punishment & Society 15(4)
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