GINI DP 93: Crime, Punishment and Inequality in Ireland

The linkages between crime, punishment, policing and inequality are multifaceted. There is good empirical evidence that certain types of offending, especially homicide, are positively correlated with inequality. In addition a theoretical argument can be made to the effect that inequality creates opportunities for the kinds of corporate and white collar misconduct which, even if not criminal in a narrow legal sense, have far-reaching and damaging social repercussions. For example, the enormous scale of reckless lending, balance sheet manipulation and cynical underestimation by Irish banks will place a greater financial burden on this country’s taxpayers than the harms wrought by generations of robbers, burglars and thieves. Other countries caught up in the financial crises that defined the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century will have similar experiences. An exaggerated emphasis on financial success, to the virtual exclusion of other markers of achievement, becomes problematic in a context where there are few restraints on the means chosen to increase wealth. Traditional modes of crime prevention and control have proved insufficiently flexible to deal with a new category of harms perpetrated by a new class of offender; investigating financial malpractice requires new tools and new models of criminal justice.