Home as a Site of State‐Corporate Violence: Grenfell Tower, Aetiologies and Aftermaths
| Author | STEVE TOMBS |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12360 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
The Howard Journal Vol59 No 2. June 2020 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12360
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 120–142
Home as a Site of State-Corporate
Violence: Grenfell Tower, Aetiologies
and Aftermaths
STEVE TOMBS
Professor of Criminology, The Open University
Abstract: Focusing on the aftermaths and consequences of the Grenfell Tower fire,
this article reveals the factors which combined to produce a fire that could have such
devastating effects. Further, it delineates the discrete ways in which distinct types of
harms – physical, emotional and psychological, cultural and relational, and financial
and economic – continue to be produced by a combination of State and corporate acts and
omissions. Some of these harms are readily apparent, others are opaque and obscured. It
concludes by showing how failures to mitigate these factors constitute one manifestation
of the more general phenomenon of ‘social murder’.
Keywords: corporate crime; home; social murder; State-corporate violence;
Grenfell
While research, writing and activism around the phenomena of corporate
and State crime have burgeoned since they first reached mainstream aca-
demic attention in the 1960s, such crimes remain relatively obscured by
the crimes of the usual suspects. This is despite the fact that corporate
and State crimes and harms kill, injure, defraud, and poison many, many
more people than so-called conventional crimes; moreover, they often do
so relatively silently,with their role and mutual complicity r arely becoming
apparent and, if attaining visibility, are rarely brought within the purview
of crime, let alone violent crime (Tombs and Whyte 2015). Finally, if curi-
ously, they are rarely exposed in relation to ‘the home’.
Here I cast a critical lens on a recent atrocity – the fire at Grenfell Tower
in West London – and examine how we might focus on this as an instance
of State-corporate violence. In indicating the ways in which a combination
of State and corporate acts and omissions resulted in a fire producing a
range of social harms, I bring to the fore how ‘home’ can be the site of
State-corporate criminality and harm.
The article begins by setting out some of the key parameters of corporate
crime, then State-corporate crime, before indicating why, and how, many
of these are best understood as crimes of violence. The main sections of
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2020 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League
and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The Howard Journal Vol59 No 2. June 2020
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 120–142
the article then focus on some of the key dynamics which contextualised,
produced, and then followed the fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017,
which killed 72 residents and detrimentally affected, forever, the lives of
many, many more.
A Conceptual Introduction: From Corporate Crime to State Corporate
Violen ce
Corporate crime is a broad term, covering a large range of offences of
omission and commission with differing types of modus operandi, per-
petrators, effects, and victims. Because ‘corporate crime’ refers to a wide
range of events and processes, it is often classified into ‘types’, one com-
mon classification covering financial offences, crimes against employees,
the natural environment, and consumers.
Academic studies have focused upon a range of financial crimes, includ-
ing: illegal share dealings, mergers and takeovers; tax evasion; bribery;
and illegal accounting practices. Crimes such as those by Enron, Guinness
and BCCI are symbolic of the term ‘financial crime’, and may target other
companies, shareholders, governments, or consumers. But most financial
crimes are far less visible than these iconic exemplars even as they victimise
millions of consumers (Slapper and Tombs1999) – a classic example here,
and one directly focused on the home, were the endowment mortgage
frauds of the 1990s – mis-selling a particularly risky mortgage product to
high-risk customers generated up to five million victims (Fooks 2003).
A second class of corporate crimes are offences arising from the em-
ployment relationship. These include sexual and racial discrimination,
violations of wage laws, of rights to organise and take industrial action,
and various occupational health and safety offences. Now, while these of-
fences generally originate in work and the workplace, there are various
ways in which they impinge upon ‘home’. Although relatively obscured in
discussions of work, latest figures for the UK show some 4.3 million people
work at home or use home as their main base for work (Office for National
Statistics 2018) – while we know that such working is generally poorly pro-
tected, not least in terms of occupational health and safety (Tombs and
Whyte 2007).
Third are a series of crimes against the environment, including illegal
emissions to air, water, and land, hazardous waste dumping, and illegal
manufacturing practices. A focus on this area was very much at the fore-
front of the emergence of the sub-genre around eco-crimes, commonly
referred to as ‘Green’ criminology (Lynch 1990).
A final category of corporate crimes are those committed directly against
consumers: illegal sales/marketing practices; the sale of unfit goods; con-
spiracies to fix prices and/or carve up market share; and various forms of
false/illegal labelling. Below, I consider some crimes and harms associated
with the manufacture and sale of ‘white goods’ in the UK.
So there is a range of known corporate crimes and harms, some of
which impact directly, others indirectly, upon the home. But there is a
further set of observations to be made here regarding these crimes and
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2020 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard
League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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