“Although it is all but unthinkable for most people most of the time, the global money system is, from top to bottom, a massive opportunity structure for crime.”
That observation by Canadian criminologist and book contributor James Sheptycki signals the rationale for the just-released Big Crime and Big Policing: All About Big Money?. UTP caught up with the book’s three co-editors for highlights of this important collection: Tonita Murray, independent scholar and former director general of the Canadian Police College; Elizabeth Kirley, professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto; and Stephen Schneider, professor of criminology at St Mary’s University in Halifax.
We know that crime often has a financial motive, but how is today’s policing all about “big money?”
TONITA: Money underpins both crime and policing. Crime becomes big when money in different forms is acquired and multiplied into vast wealth by a variety of illegitimate means. Policing becomes big in part from the large amounts of money governments spend to control big crime. In simple terms, money flows as a credit to big crime perpetrators but flows out as a debit on the public purse for policing and law enforcement services. This means society pays twice for the activities of big crime: first in having financial resources diverted from the legitimate economic system and second from the high cost of regulating and monitoring legitimate business systems to prevent malfeasance, or of investigating and prosecuting offences when they are discovered.
How significant are the connections you show between big crime, big policing, and big money?
STEPHEN: We see an opportunity cost to governments in allocating scarce public resources to prevent and suppress big crimes that could be spent on education or health care programs. We note police diverting resources from supporting the good order and well-being of society to intensive and expensive investigation of big crime. We identify major incongruities when following the money through the banking system, among Canada’s tax evaders, within the secretive “grey periphery” of detecting art crime, and among money launderers.
We present numerous examples of Sheptycki’ s assertion that the money system is a massive opportunity structure for crime. For instance, my chapter names supposedly well-regulated and respectable banks and dissects their willful flouting of national and international laws and regulations to maximize profit for their clients and themselves. In their chapters discussing money laundering and financial crime, both Sanaa Ahmed, of the University of Calgary, and Peter German, a former deputy commissioner of the RCMP, reference the supposedly well-regulated casinos in British Columbia that have laundered billions of illegal dollars through their gambling operations. Since casinos are taxed, the government is in effect a beneficiary of illegal proceeds. Queen’s University professor emerita Laureen Snider also makes a telling case about how neo-liberal trends in government, which have reduced oversight and created an exploitive business environment, enable members of the privileged elite to avoid or evade taxes. With a shift in setting but not subject matter or focus, Elizabeth Kirley takes us through the murkier corners of the art world to explain how some of the privileged elite manage to make fine art so profitable, and why they appreciate it more for its ability to facilitate tax avoidance, hide or launder assets, and generate huge profits than for its aesthetic value.
The dimensions of the problem seem limitless. How does the book manage to cover all the various aspects?
TONITA: We show both the local and global connections between money, crime, and policing. We also illustrate from theoretical, empirical, and practical perspectives how the nexus of these three elements have had a destabilizing impact on trade, commerce, banking, and ultimately economic and social order. We realize of course that this is an ambitious agenda that could easily take several volumes and many years to achieve. But we think we can still make our point convincingly with this collection of contributions from a diverse group of scholars and practitioners who are expert in various aspects of financial crime or policing. Each has contributed a “vignette” of a different facet of big crime or big policing, which we have connected with editorial commentary. Collectively the vignettes present an impressionistic rather than an exhaustive portrait but one that is nevertheless nuanced, rich, and persuasive in tracing the dark interactions of the money, crime, and policing that harm the social and economic welfare of many for the benefit of a few.
How do you assess police efforts so far to deal with big crime?
ELIZABETH: Each chapter shows that the police do not do very well. Our book contends that big crimes create local and national harm and easily elude control because of their size and frequent international spread. Even when regulatory and other law enforcement agencies such as Customs are included in the definition of police, they are insufficiently resourced and insufficiently expert in all the facets of big crime to do more than dent the surface. Moreover, the public police in particular have the constant pressure of day-to-day order maintenance as a first priority. This means that despite such successful efforts as those illustrated by Tonita Murray, Laura Huey, and Lorna Ferguson of the University of Western Ontario in their chapters, police also fall short of expectations, sometimes violating human rights or breaking the law themselves as Duke University’s police scholar Peter K. Manning and two founding members of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, Margaret Beare and Anna Willats describe in their respective chapters. Poor performance on the street by some police has led to antipathy in many quarters. For example, Kevin Haggerty, Sandra Bucerias (both at the University of Alberta) and Daniel J. Jones (former police officer and chair of justice studies at Alberta’s NorQuest College) discuss very perceptively how the negative attitudes of some academics towards the police break cooperative ties and affect police research. Yet, despite obvious police imperfections, if the current calls for defunding the police were heeded big crime control would be further impaired.
Do you have any “big” takeaways from your examination of big crime, big policing, and big money?
ELIZABETH: Our big takeaway concerns the role of big government. While not addressed directly in all chapters, a collective picture emerges of governments failing to protect the money system, prevent big crime, or direct and resource the police adequately, and even inadvertently encouraging or colluding with big crime. Sanaa Ahmed explores how the interests of the state as an economic actor are intertwined with those of big money so that governments organize and facilitate certain economic crimes to protect their own interests, thus undermining its other objective of policing big crime. Michigan State law professor Stephen Wilks raises the question of government opportunism in pursuing criminal prosecution of a Huawei executive in what he shows was essentially a trade dispute between the US and China. One can clearly see that this course of action violated the executive’s human rights and, as a corollary, those of the two Canadians imprisoned by China as a pressure tactic to have Canada decide against extradition of the executive to the US. In his turn, Peter German describes how government under-resourcing and over-burdening of police with new responsibilities ultimately undermine the ostensible government aim of suppressing big crime. Tonita Murray similarly argues that if governments fulfilled their obligation to give effective policy direction to their agents the police, and held them accountable for fulfilling their responsibilities, there would be more effective control of big crime and fewer police transgressions. State negligence, inadequacy, or collusion therefore further contribute to the wicked problem of big crime and big policing and intensify rather than diminish the criminogenic nature of the money system.
Who are the ideal readers for Big Crime and Big Policing: All About Big Money? and of what value do you think it will be to them?
TONITA: Our ultimate wish for the book is to have all the different findings and insights adding up to more than a mere sum of the parts. The reader, whether police scholar, student researcher, legal practitioner, government policy maker, or new police recruit, will decide whether we have succeeded or not. Apart from the important insights of the individual chapters, we believe that some thought-provoking questions emerge from the collective portrait we have painted. Chief among these is undoubtedly what governments are doing to protect the money system, to control big crime and to ensure the effectiveness and justness of big policing. Good governance is essential to a non-criminogenic money system, honest markets, and effective and ethical cops. Beyond that, I believe we have provided grist to the mill for other actors similarly concerned with the circumstances we describe who can exert a positive influence. And that includes the public who, in a democracy, constitute the decisive influence. And finally, despite the serious subject matter, we hope the book proves a good read for all.
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