Conference papers

Zero tolerance, naming and shaming : is there a case for it with crimes of the powerful?

John Braithwaite
Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University

Presented at:
The future and criminology : new solutions for old problems or old solutions for new problems? : 14th annual ANZSOC conference
University of Western Australia, Perth
28-30 September 1999

Abstract

Australia has a Prime Minister who likes "zero tolerance". Mr. Howard says schools that detect children using drugs should always expel them. It is hard to think of any policy better calculated to increase crime than automatic expulsion from school of children alleged to be guilty of minor delinquencies. On the left, some are tempted to respond to such irresponsibility by suggesting zero tolerance for fiddling parliamentary expense accounts, tax cheating by the wealthy and corporate crime. It will be argued that it is more responsible to keep documenting the hypocrisy and then contend that zero tolerance would be an equally knuckle-headed policy for crimes of the powerful as it is for crimes of the powerless. Naming and shaming, however, raises different issues. It will be argued that while naming and shaming is overwhelmingly counterproductive for both juvenile and adult common crime, with organizational crime there is a much stronger case for selective use of naming and shaming.

About the presenter

John Braithwaite is a Professor in the Law Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. Both his BA and PhD (anthropology and sociology) were at the University of Queensland, where he was a student of Paul Wilson and John Western. In 1979, he was a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine, where Gilbert Geis became an American mentor. Empirical work on organizational crime was his primary endeavour in the 70s and early 80s when Braithwaite worked at the Australian Institute of Criminology. Books in this tradition included Corporate crime in the pharmaceutical industry, the impact of publicity on corporate offenders (with Brent Fisse), and Of manners gentle (with Peter Grabosky). In the late 80s, theoretical work was his preoccupation. Crime shame and reintegration, not just deserts : a republican theory of criminal justice (with Philip Pettit), Responsive regulation (with Ian Ayres), and Corporations, crime and accountability (with Brent Fisse) were the fruits of this labour. In the 90s, praxis in Australia connected to this theoretical work is Braithwaite's priority. He sees restorative justice as a global social movement to which his work contributes. From 1985 to 1995 he sought to implement notions of responsive regulation as a part-time Commissioner in Australia's antitrust and consumer protection agency, the Trade Practices Commission and as a consultant on nursing home regulation to the Australian government. Community organizations are also a focus of this endeavour. He has chaired the Australian Federation of Consumer Organizations, worked full time for two years as a consumer advocate and was the community organizations' representative on the Economic Planning Advisory Council (chaired by the Prime Minister) between 1983 and 1987. He has two books in press: Global business regulation (with Peter Drahos) and Regulation, crime and freedom. At the Australian National University, from 1995 to 1998 Braithwaite was Head of Law and from 1991 to 1996 he led a project that continues to engage more than a hundred scholars entitled Reshaping Australian Institutions: Toward and Beyond 2001. This project involves a rethinking of Australia's key institutions for its centenary as a nation, including foundational questions such as the ways in which Australia might become a republic.

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