Bacher, J.L., Bouchard, M., Paquin, J., Tremblay, P. (2005). Another Look at The Corporate Advantage in Routine Criminal Proceedings, Canadian Journal of Criminology and Justice Policy, 47 (4): 685-708.

If corporate actors are more likely than other offenders to evade punishment, they should also be more successful, as victims, in getting offenders punished when brought to court. This argument was explicitly elaborated and submitted to empirical testing by John Hagan (1982). This article analyses all fraud cases against businesses investigated by police officers in Montreal from January to June 1991. Initial findings indicate that fraud cases were more likely to be cleared by charge when offenders defrauded large business establishments and less likely to be prosecuted when they targeted small businesses. The article explores the extent to which reliance on private security agencies, fraud characteristics, repeat-player effects, differential responsiveness of police investigators and criminal courts, and other potentially confounding factors account for this apparent corporate advantage effect.


Canadian Journal of Criminology and Justice Policy