State-corporate Crime

In criminology, the concept of state-corporate crime refers to crimes that result from the relationship between the policies of the state and the policies and practices of commercial corporations. The term was coined by Kramer and Michalowski (1990), and redefined by Aulette and Michalowski (1993). These definitions were intended to include all "socially injurious acts" and not merely those that are defined by the local criminal jurisdiction as crime. This is not universally accepted as a valid definition so a less contentious version has been adopted here. As an academic classification, it is distinguished from:

• corporate crime, which studies deviance within the context of a corporation and by a corporation;
• political crime, which is crime directed at the state; and
• state crime or "state-organised crime", which studies crimes committed by government organisations (Chambliss: 1989).

One of the assertions made by those involved in this work is that a focus on the actual relationship between the state and corporations dependent on the state for their profitability can expose a more complete range of criminal activity than might be provided by independent analyses of corporate or state-organised crimes.