Diffusion of blame across many actors erases individual accountability for collective harm

Evidence

Story and Morgenson (2011a) provide a detailed account of how widespread machinations caused the economic debacle without anyone’s feeling accountable for it. They cite William Black, a law professor who directed litigation during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. He called the existing atmosphere a “criminogenic environment.” He contrasted the vigorous litigation of the savings and loan transgressions with the lethargic federal response to the global economic catastrophe: “There were no criminal referrals from the regulators. No fraud working groups. No national task force. There has been no effective punishment of the elites here.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1556

Categorization

• DEFINE: Labels the mechanism: William Black’s term ‘criminogenic environment’ captures how an accountability vacuum itself, not just bad actors, generates wrongdoing.
• XREF: William Black’s distinction between vigorous S&L prosecutions and no prosecutions of financial elites parallels Cooper’s argument about how class shapes which harmful policy gets punished. — connects to: Capitalism abstracts in order to extract and distances harm to dodge accountability — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 111; Individual-responsibility climate appeals let impersonal structure escape accountability — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 139; Capitalism shifts blame between individuals and structure to deflect accountability — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 145 (+7 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1556