The Invisibility of Crimes of the Powerful

The enabling potential of power is further explored in this second substantive chapter. Here we outline the significance and importance of the ways in which some individuals and groups are enabled, whilst others are less able, to avoid detection, prosecution, punishment and accountability. This chapter explores how it is this happens. In 1999, Jupp et al. mapped the contours of what they termed invisible crime, victimisation and regulation and considered the commonalities associated with this range of acts, events and experiences. They suggested that there are seven interacting and overlapping features that help make harms or crimes more or less invisible. These features are no knowledge, no statistics, no theory, no research, no control, no politics and no panic! and enable powerful entities to remain hidden. Second, invisible crimes can be categorised into typologies with similar characteristics. These spatial typologies are as follows: the body, home, street, environment, suite, state and virtual space (Davies et al. 2014). Together, these conceptualisations of the features of invisibility and spatial typologies provide a framework for the investigation of the range of crimes of the powerful in the individual chapters belonging to Parts I and II of Crime and Power.