High and Low Corruption: Children, Capabilities, and Crime provides a systematic theory of corruption, and analyzes “high corruption” in terms of political corruption and high-end white-collar crime, and “low corruption” in terms of juvenile delinquency and street crime. It shows how delinquents and street criminals often suffer from arrested development of their basic human capabilities. In turn, Harry Adams argues that their maldevelopment often emerges neither merely through their own fault when they were children nor through the fault of biological caregivers who were guilty of parental child neglect. Beyond this, Adams argues that the maldevelopment of at-risk youth commonly emerges through a kind of political child neglect, when corrupt public officials fail to provide adequate protection or back-up support for their development. In these ways, the author shows how the former type of high corruption (or “suite crime”) can significantly contribute to the latter type of corruption (and street crime). By applying a set of moral, constitutional, and criminological principles from Derek Parfit, Ronald Dworkin, and Jeffrey Reiman, respectively, Adams also provides a systematic account of why and how both these types of corruption should be curbed.
