State-corporate Crime - Examples of The Research

Examples of The Research

Following the Challenger space shuttle explosion, Kramer (1992) noted that NASA, the United States Federal government body with responsibility for the project, had only been subject to self-regulation of an entirely inadequate nature. Kauzlarich and Kramer (1993) examined a nuclear weapons production complex in the United States and found that the Department of Energy and the private corporations that contracted with the Department had been allowed to work in extreme secrecy, unfettered by the regulations that had governed the civilian nuclear industry. While Aulette and Michalowski (1993) examined a fire in the Imperial Food Products chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina where twenty-five workers died, and uncovered "an interwoven pattern of regulatory failure on the part of several state and federal agencies" that had allowed the company's management to continue violating basic safety regulations in search of corporate profit. Finally, Harper and Israel (1999) concluded that the economic need for inward investment forced the Papua New Guinea government to match the lax regulatory regimes offered in other developing countries. While governments and individual public servants claimed to maintain a commitment to environmental conservation, they were prepared to sacrifice the environment for economic development.