The President and the Boss's son: Prosecuting the crimes of America's most powerful
| Published date | 01 August 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806221122610 |
| Author | John Hagan,Bill McCarthy,Daniel Herda |
| Date | 01 August 2023 |
The President and the Boss’s
son: Prosecuting the crimes of
America’s most powerful
John Hagan
Northwestern University, American Bar Foundation, USA
Bill McCarthy
Rutgers University—Newark, USA
Daniel Herda
Merrimack College, USA
Abstract
Relatively few theoretical criminologists are recognized for their lasting impact onpublic
policy, and it is therefore instructive to reconsider a scholar whose influence endures.
Donald Cressey wrote a theoretically driven Presidential Commission essay that
inspired the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). He also
advanced a theory of “respectable crime”that explains why this act has more exten-
sively been directed downwards to dismantle ethnically organized criminal groups rather
than upwards to prosecute elite political conspiracies led, for example, by Chicago
Mayor Richard M Daley and US President Donald J Trump. We present case studies
of Daley and Trump that illustrate the continuing relevance and underappreciated poten-
tial of Cressey’s theoretically driven scholarship.
Keywords
crimes, politics, privilege
Corresponding author:
John Hagan, 910 N Lake Shore Drive, Apt. 2718, Chicago, Illinois, 60611, USA.
Email: j-hagan@northwestern.edu
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2023, Vol. 27(3) 357–380
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13624806221122610
journals.sagepub.com/home/tcr
Introduction
Research on the American politics of crime control exploded in the second half of the
20th century (e.g. Becker, 1963; Beckett, 1997; Chambliss and Seidman, 1971;
Quinney, 1970; Turk, 1982), and this important work continues (e.g. Bell, 2017;
Garland, 2001; Peterson and Krivo, 2010; Rios, 2011; Schoenfeld, 2018; Simon,
2007; Vargas, 2016). Yet much remains unknown, for example, about who uses political
power to control crime and against whom it is used. Although several US presidents have
been impeached in the House of Representatives, in proceedings that are political rather
than criminal in the traditional sense, no president has yet been convicted in the Senate,
where criminal evidence is required but not necessarily sufficient. Does this mean none of
our serving presidents has committed a crime?
We present case studies of two elite politicians. The first, Richard M Daley, son of
“Boss”Richard J Daley, was Chicago’s state’s attorney and mayor from 1980 to 2012
and is currently a defendant in a case involving the torture of an African-American
man. The second, Donald J Trump, is the only president impeached twice by the
House, yet not convicted by the Senate, despite evidence of his linkage to Russian inter-
ference in the 2016 presidential election.
Daley and Trump’s careers followed the rise of American criminology, which
included Edwin Sutherland’s (1949) and Donald Cressey’s (1965) theories of “white
collar”and “respectable crime.”Cressey (1965, 1969, 1972) stimulated the Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which incorporates 35 organized,
white-collar and political crimes, potentially including the alleged ones of Daley and
Trump. This article uses respectable crime theory to explain why this Act has more exten-
sively been directed downwards to dismantle ethnically organized crime groups rather
than upwards to prosecute elite political conspiracies led, for example, by Chicago
Mayor Richard M Daley and US President Donald J Trump.
The age of Reagan and its interconnected politics
Daley and Trump have channeled a long history of American resentment of whites
against Black and Brown minorities. Both Daley and Trump are part of the historical
scholarship (Wilentz 2008) and political criminology (Hagan 2010) of the “Age of
Reagan.”Chicago author-journalist, Mike Royko (e.g. 1971), explained that during the
rise of Reagan, “[T]he political winds were blowing from the right”and Chicago’s
first Mayor [Boss] Daley “was as much a part of it as Wallace, Agnew, or Strom
Thurmond”(1971: 194). These winds intensified racial resentment.
The “Age of Reagan”is often cited as having unleashed expectations of wealth among
American elites (e.g. Andersen, 2020). Reagan (1981) began by attacking low-income
groups and the “breakdown in the criminal justice system”. Elected Governor of
California in 1966, his White backlash “law and order”platform was his springboard
into national politics (McGirr, 2001).
Richard Nixon borrowed Governor Reagan’s law and order platform for his own
presidential campaign; however, Watergate brought his downfall in 1974. Wilentz
(2008: 16–25) argues Nixon’s policies were insufficiently conservative to mark the
358 Theoretical Criminology 27(3)
Get this document and AI-powered insights with a free trial of vLex and Vincent AI
Get Started for FreeStart Your 3-day Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your 3-day Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your 3-day Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your 3-day Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your 3-day Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting