I should have thought that pragmatic lawyers like Justin are constantly asking the question "cui bono," whether the topic of the moment be robbery, prostitution, Medicare frauds, drug-related crimes, workplace theft, or copyright infringement. Anyhow, distribution & retribution are intimately connected, both being determined in the final analysis by the relations of production.
Marx's approach to the question of crime & capital is an ironic & dialectical one:
***** Crime takes off the labour market a portion of the excess population, diminishes competition among workers, and to a certain extent stops wages from falling below the minimum, while the war against crime absorbs another part of the same population. The criminal therefore appears as one of those natural "equilibrating forces" which establish a just balance and open up a whole perspective of "useful" occupations. (Marx, "Theories of Surplus Value," _Crime and Capitalism_, ed. David R. Greenberg) *****
>From cops, prison guards, private security guards, social workers,
locksmiths, computer programmers, workers & engineers at various policing &
surveillance equipment manufacturing firms, breeders of police dogs,
lawyers, prosecutors, judges, executioners, to professors of criminology &
moral philosophy, there is an expansive list & expanding number of people
employed in occupations fundamentally dependent upon the existence of crime
of all kinds. Now, the economy that raises the proportion of the
imprisoned population massively while escalating the range & number of
people whose livings are partly or wholly parasitical upon the production
of criminals is very likely based upon the one-sided class war from above,
increasing income & wealth inequality, cuts in public education & other
social welfare programs, and corresponding changes in laws to get tough on
crime (what Michael Perelman calls "the Haitian road to economic
development" in _The Pathology of the U.S. Economy_)?
As for the labeling of crime, Marx has this to say:
***** There must be something very rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery, and increases in crimes even more rapidly than in numbers....Violations of the law are generally the offspring of economical agencies beyond the control of the legislator, but...it depends to some degree on official society to stamp certain violations of its rules as crimes or as transgressions only. This nomenclature, so far from being indifferent, decides on the fate of thousands of men, and the moral tone of society. Law itself may not only punish crime, but improvise it, and the law of professional lawyers is very apt to work in this direction. Thus, it has been justly remarked by an eminent historian, that the Catholic clergy of the medieval times, with its dark views of human nature, introduced by its influence into criminal legislation, has created more crimes than forgiven sins. (Marx, "Population, Crime and Pauperism," _Crime and Capitalism_, ed. David R. Greenberg) *****
BTW, if we fully account for _all_ infractions of _all_ laws, aren't most of us outside prisons -- so-called law-abiding individuals -- in fact unindicted law-breakers?
Lastly, given the way in which "welfare fraud" scandals helped to pave the way for the "welfare reform," those who want to discuss "Medicare frauds" should be advised to approach the subject cautiously or avoid it altogether.
Yoshie
P.S. My job, too, depends on crime and criminals. What is literature without transgressions? What is cinema without crime? Marx quotes from Shakespeare's _Timon of Athens_ to discuss the inverting power of money:
***** ...This yellow slave Will knit and break religions; bless th'accurst; Make the hoar leprosy adored; place thieves, And give them title, knee, and approbation, With senators on the bench.... (qtd in Marx, _Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts_) *****
The mature Marx's dialectical irony goes further:
***** The criminal produces an impression now moral, now tragic, and renders a "service" by arousing the moral and aesthetic sentiments of the public. He produces not only text-books on criminal law, the criminal law itself, and thus legislators, but also art, literature, novels and the tragic drama, as _Oedipus_ and _Richard III_, as well as Mullner's _Schuld_ and Schiller's _Rauber_, testify. (Marx, "Theories of Surplus Value") *****