White Collar Crime Essay

In a looking glass of a sociologist, we can see white collar crime in our everyday world. When it presents itself; the victims are left hurt and the rest in awe of their awful actions. White Collar Crime is defined as “White collar crime overlaps with corporate crime because the opportunity for fraud, bribery, insider trading, embezzlement, computer crime, and forgery is more available to white-collar employees.” stated by James Henslin. White Collar Crime can be seen in the Libor Scandal, as a prime example.

White collar crime, as a rule, is less visible than conventional crime. A white collar crime, by definition, is a non-violent act involving deception, typically committed by a business person or public official. lawyershop.com

White Collar crime is not a crime unto it self, but instead a criteria that has to be met in order for a crime to be considered as White- Collar Crime; (Blount, 2002) hence the reason why Corporate Crime is also considered as White- Collar Crime. At the same time, White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime can be seen as distinct criminological categories, however, in order to reveal this, this essay will firstly be exploring Sutherland's definition of white collar crime and the perplexity with this definition of white-collar crime. It will then be looking at the modification which had to take place with Sutherland's definition of white-collar crime in order to established a distinction between white-collar and corporate crime.

White collar crime is often associated with crimes committed within businesses. These include different forms of fraud such as tax fraud, welfare fraud, money laundering, and property crime (Simpson & Benson, 2009: 42). These forms of white collar crime often have a huge impact on the welfare of the society in profound ways. For instance, according to an article authored by McGrath, a company that suffers losses from fraud must make up for this loss by for example raising the prices of its products. Hikes in prices would mean that consumers would be required to dig dipper into their pockets thus affecting their finances. The loss from fraud could also make the affected company to take drastic measures such as layoffs or implementing salary cuts for the employees (McGrath, n.d).

White-collar crimes are just as prevalent today as ordinary street crimes. Studies show that criminal acts committed by white-collar criminals continue to increase due to unforeseen opportunities presented in the corporate world, but these crimes are often overlooked or minimally publicized in reference to criminal acts on the street. Many street crimes are viewed as unnecessary, horrendous crimes because they are committed by lower class citizens, whereas white collar crimes are illegal acts committed by seemingly respectable people whose occupational roles are considered successful and often admired by many (Piquero, 2014). These views often allow white collar crimes to “slip through the cracks” and carry lesser charges or punishment.

Most everyone goes home after a long day of work and watches the news. Think, what is usually reported? The weather, local activities, headline news, or daily criminal activity. Shootings, stabbings, homicides, etc. are all discussed by media anchors these days. This causes most everyone in our society to become familiar with crimes that are considered street crimes. What most people don’t hear about on the news is what is considered white-collar crime, sometimes known as corporate crime. White-collar crime not only is less reported in the media but also receives weaker punishments than street crime. This paper will first discuss the similarities between the two types of crime and then explain why their punishments are strongly

This paper discusses the Atlanta Public School scandal of 2009 and the underlying causes of it, as well as the different theories of white collar crime associated to the scandal. White collar crime is often not thought of as a “serious” crime. There are many reasons for this notion, including that white collar crime often receives less media coverage than street crime. In addition, the hidden complex nature of white collar crime allows many incidents to go unreported and sometimes even undetected. One of the issues associated to the detection of white collar crime is that it is difficult to isolate just one person as the perpetrator unlike more typical street crimes such as with a robbery, assault, or murder. However, white collar crime is a serious crime, and one that can have serious negative impacts on society while victimizing many without their knowledge such as the students in the Atlanta Public School System Scandal.

A white-collar crime by definition is a crime that is committed by individuals of higher status. It is not necessarily a violent crime, but could be depending on the situation. An individual who works in a professional environment, such as the government or corporation tend to take advantage of employees and manipulate them into thinking their practices are legitimate. Some examples, of white-collar crimes include fraud, embezzlement, insider trading, and other various crimes. However, individuals who involve them selves in drugs or stealing someone’s personal possessions commit street crime. For example, it tends to be violent depending on the situation and it usually happens in a public place or

Most people, when they hear the word “crime,” think about street crime or violent crime such as murder, rape, theft, or drugs. However, there is another type of crime that has cost people their life savings, investors’ billions of dollars, and has had significant impacts of multiple lives; it is called white collar crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines white collar crime as

White-collar crime is defined as the financial motivations of non-violent crimes that are committed by professionals of business and those of the government. In the field of criminology, Edwin Suthelan (1939), a socialist who was the first person to define white-collar crime as a crime that respectable and those people of higher social status commit. The crimes include those associated with fraud, bribery, embezzlement, cybercrime, money laundering, theft of the identity and many more crimes that are nonviolent. For the white collar crimes, the offenses committed should produce some gains financially. The crimes are thereby committed by those persons holding various positions in businesses or organizations, and it is because of this position they can gain access to amounts of huge money that they get from the people like customers with whom they serve. The criminals involved are not caught in activities that are violent, involved in drug issues or illegal activities.

In this day and age, a corporation, family, or individual always has a potential risk of encountering fraud within their money supply. On average, fraud and abuse costs U.S. organizations more than $400 billion annually (Federal Bureau Investigation, 2010). Many may think that white collared crime is only money laundering or stealing, but that is only two out of the sum that countless culprits get away with. The term “white-collar crime,” originally coined in 1939 is synonymous with the full range of frauds committed by business and government professionals (Federal Bureau Investigation, 2010). These frauds include anything from bankruptcy fraud, money laundering, identity theft, corporate fraud to a wide number of threats all circling

This day and age, crime is not restricted to street violence, an atrociously, inconspicuous crime has made its way to center stage, has made its way to center stage, but not across the minds of many Americans or various news stories. “White Collar crime is a comparatively new form of deviance, that is capable of irrepealable harm. White collar crimes, generally defined as crimes committed by persons against the organizations for which they work (embezzlement, for example) or on behalf of those organizations (for Instance, price fixing), occur with great frequency in the United States and results in significant individual and collective harm (Messner and Rosenfeld 28).” Crimes such as these have left organizations to sign off on faulty products to save money, or steal money from elderly persons, ending for both cases in death or serious harm. White-collar crime is not something to taken lightly, it may not be as physically taxing and noticeable as street crime, but it has the ability to cause the same amount, if not more damage. Crime

Quinney (1964), “Because the validity of white collar crime as a form of crime has been a subject of severe controversy, the question of conceptual clarity has largely been ignored. Today, as a result, the meaning of the concept is not always clear” (p208).

White-collar crime is “generally identified as non-violent crimes that public officials and business people commit predominantly for their own personal gain”. Edwin Sutherland came up with the term “white-collar crime” to explain the crimes that both middle class and upper class people committed in the course of their business activities. White-collar crime is so often neglected as crime, that many people don’t even consider it as a crime until they are the victims. People don’t understand that the effects of white-collar crime are much higher than other crimes. If we look at it from a monetary perspective, the costs

White collar crime is a problem that we do not really see the full extent of; Geis and Stotland (1980) present the argument that the seriousness of victimisation caused by many corporations is much greater than that caused by common crimes however the public seem much less interested and concerned with white collar crime. Some traditional criminological theories have attempted to prove that white collar crime is not a different and separate phenomenon to common, every day crime. Robert Merton’s Strain Theory is applied to everyday crime, however his theory was in fact set up as an economic theory that he believed could explain all types of corporate crimes as well as traditional crimes. Gottfredson and Hirschi also provided what they understood to be a ‘General Theory of Crime’ with Control Theory, which they also believed to be relevant to both white collar and traditional crimes. I am going to discuss these theories in detail and show how they do, and do not provide sufficient explanations of white collar crimes. I am also going to include Organizational Theory in my discussion which looks at the issue of understanding crime in a different way. Traditional theories such as strain theory and control theory form a certain understanding of the issue, on the contrary some argue that these theories are not appropriate and need twisting to fit the issue, some suggesting a completely separate way of thinking is needed to understand white collar and corporate crime.