This paper illuminates how Britain and Australia have experienced what is commonly termed ‘financial crime’ from the nineteenth century to the present. In Australia financial crime history has been much neglected, as it was in Britain until relatively recently. In looking to redress this, the paper considers the significance that ...
(Show more)This paper illuminates how Britain and Australia have experienced what is commonly termed ‘financial crime’ from the nineteenth century to the present. In Australia financial crime history has been much neglected, as it was in Britain until relatively recently. In looking to redress this, the paper considers the significance that ‘Crime History’ could have in the setting where the global financial crisis is widely viewed as a ‘turning point’ for financial crime enforcement (Tomasic, 2011), and its capability even of engendering ‘transformative’ understandings of financial wrongdoing required for wider societal acceptance of it as crime (Friedrichs, 2012). The idea of ‘victim blame’ is not unique to financial crime, but it is a recognised illustration of the perceptual and enforcement challenges presented by it. This paper considers the apparent tensions arising between perceiving victims as lacking due diligence and care in their personal and business affairs, or even being feckless and greedy on the one hand, and on the other acknowledging that much financial misconduct is perpetrated by those who are minded to exploit others’ vulnerabilities and are skilled in doing so. And in so doing, it comments on how Britain and Australia respond to competing ideas concerning capacity of an individual to protect themself from financial vulnerability, and the widely recognised indiscriminate nature of victimisation.
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