Toward a penology of organizational offending
| Published date | 01 October 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221132803 |
| Author | James E Sutton,Clayton D Peoples |
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
Toward a penology of
organizational offending
James E Sutton
Department of Sociology, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, USA
Clayton D Peoples
Department of Sociology, University of Nevada at Reno, USA
Abstract
The punishment of organizational offending has largely been overlooked by penologists,
despite the fact that organizational actors such as corporations and the state perpetrate
the most serious forms of offending. Accordingly, this paper represents a step toward
foregrounding organizational offending within the discipline of penology. We begin by
discussing the implications of several Classical School ideals and theories of punishment
for organizational offending, with special emphases on challenges and contradictions. We
then review control strategies that are unique to organizational offending, and we go on
to contemplate how expressive and non-institutional tactics might potentially factor into
how organizational offending is punished. When taken together, these sections reveal
the limitations of penology’s traditional assumptions of an individual offender and indi-
vidual offending. We conclude by outlining our view of what a penology of organizational
offending should accomplish.
Keywords
corporate crime, organizational deviance, penology, punishment, state crime, state
corporate crime
Introduction
The origins of penology, as well as criminology more generally, are typically traced
back to the works of Cesare Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham, and other Classical School
thinkers from the Enlightenment era (Cullen et al., 2013; Ferrajoli, 2014). An under-
Corresponding author:
James E Sutton, Department of Sociology, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 300 Pulteney Street, Geneva,
New York 14456, USA.
Email: jsutton@hws.edu
Article
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(4) 1100–1118
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14624745221132803
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
acknowledged legacy of the Classical School is its focus on the punishment of indi-
vidual offenders. For instance, we now have over 250 years of theories, concepts,
debates, and best practices pertaining to what we should do about individual
offending.
When it comes to the punishment of organizational offending, however, deliberation
has been more limited. Organizational offending includes “illegal acts of omission or
commission of an individual or a group of individuals…in accordance with the operative
goals of the organization”(Schrager and Short, 1978: 411–412). Organizations perpetrate
a variety of deviant acts (Ermann and Lundman, 1978), and powerful organizational
actors, including corporations (Clinard and Yeager, 1980) and the state (Rothe, 2009),
are often prolific offenders who inflict greater harm and offend across broader jurisdic-
tions than individual street offenders (Hagan, 2012; Reiman and Leighton, 2016;
Rothe, 2009; Sutherland, 1949).
In an overview of the current state of penology recently published in this journal,
leading penologist David Garland (2018: 14) referenced “America’s extraordinarily
high levels of punishment”when contextualizing the rise of mass incarceration.
Other scholars have foreboded greater oppression stemming from the emergence of
aNew Penology that relies on incarceration to control groups who are perceived as
dangerous (Feeley and Simon, 1992). While individual offenders from disadvantaged
groups were without doubt increasingly punished more harshly during the past few
decades (Garland, 2018; Tonry, 2009), it is crucial to note that punishments directed
toward organizational offenders were actually softened during this same time
(Hagan, 2012).
Accordingly, the conventional wisdom that America has become more punitive in
recent decades is only true when looking at individual offenders. Indeed, if we instead
examine organizational offending, an alternative conclusion is that in recent decades
America has actually become less punitive. We interject this dissonance here to under-
score a more central point: the scope of penology must be broadened to include organ-
izational offending.
To that end, this paper represents a step toward foregrounding organizational offend-
ing within the discipline of penology. Examinations of the control of organizational
offending are mostly found in the corporate, state, and state-corporate crime literatures
(see Ross, 1995, 2015, 2017; Ross and Rothe, 2008; Simpson, 2002). While an exhaust-
ive overview of these literatures goes beyond our purposes here, we incorporate selected
works to introduce key considerations to a penology audience.
Aside from control, we also focus on the punishment of organizational offenses using
the conceptual language of penology, which is an undertaking that fewer scholars have
pursued (see Braithwaite and Geis, 1982; Cohen, 2020; Moore, 1987; Schlegel, 1988,
1990; Simpson, 2002). Our goal is twofold –we intend to synthesize insights into the
punishment of organizational offending derived from disparate literatures, and we aim
to problematize common narratives about punishment that have been gleaned from
only looking at individuals. Whereas penology has historically assumed a certain kind
of offender and offending, we devote our remaining sections to demonstrating the
limits of this assumption.
Sutton and Peoples 1101
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