CLASS AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM Middle- and upper-class criminals rarely suffer for their crimes. There are a number of reasons for this: The invisibility of many crimes of the powerful. For example, the only physical trace of a crime may be a computer record. Often prosecuting authorities face an enormous tangle of complex and highly specialised paperwork which they need to track down and analyse. Legal complications. These include legal problems arising from the fact that the law is based on the guilt of individuals not corporations and on inappropriate legal responses because the case is heard under admin administrative rather than criminal law. For example, many occupational health and safety omissions are not regarded as criminal acts; and it is difficult to find evidence of illegality when companies are operating within a global network The immense resources that are often available to corporations. For example, in 1999 the transnational oil company Esso hired a team of five barristers to present its case to the Royal Commission into the explosion at its Longford plant in Victoria. MENU