White Collar Crime And White Collar Crime Vs. Street Crime

The definition of crime can be defined by Tappan (1947 in [Walsh 2012: 2] as “an international act in violation of the criminal law committed without defense or excuse, and penalized by the state”, thereby insinuating that a violation of the criminal law results in a prescribed punishment. Crime is a legal concept that is applicable to a widely defined category of devious behaviour and is largely associated with socio-economic class. Conspicuously, a shift from crimes to socially harmful acts has developed, incorporating a moral risk through which it fosters a deviant behaviour, of which white collar crime is exemplified. White-collar crimes are organizational in terms of coordinated and operational devious behaviour that is often neglected

Shapiro (1990 in [Croall 2001: 66]) augmented the importance of reconsidering the conception of white-collar crime whereby the comparison between the violation of trust for conventional crime and white-collar crime was a coherent theme. Though traditional, classical criminals, namely armed street robbers steal directly from victims or properties using threatening and violent behaviour and possession of a weapon to assert their dominance, white collar criminals are considered confident and trustworthy individuals whereby they induce victims through explicit and compulsive lies, misrepresentation, concealment and deception. Simultaneously, traditional armed street robbers break into properties equipped with the intent to steal and potentially harm, as opposed to white-collar criminals who cultivate social technology and abuse their position of power, through the identification of potential targets and victims that could lead to financial gain. This insinuates that “[F]inancial frauds, for example, can have extremely severe effects, particularly where trust has been violated” (Croall 2001: 65). In continuation, individuals subjected to accounts of white-collar crime do not anticipate the implications of the crime and thus encounter difficulty accepting the concept of being

To which creates a segregation amid criminals and is further a concern raised by Sutherland (1949: 223) declaring that “the white collar criminal does not conceive of himself as a criminal because he is not dealt with under the same official procedures as other criminals and because, owing to his class status, he does not engage in intimate personal association with those who define themselves as criminals”. Hereby, Sutherland implies that the criminal justice system does not consider the implications of the crime as such, but rather is more focused on the socio-economic class that criminal is affiliated to. Typically, white-collar offenders are in powerful positions within their corporations whereby their wealth situates them in an above average socioeconomic level thus implying they have more to lose (Podgor 2007: 739). However, it should be noted that the culpability of the individual is not considered or incorporated in determining an appropriate sentence, thus the punishment sanctioned is according to the numerical value correlating with the economic loss subsequent to the crime, thereby fails to account for the individual roles of the CEO’s involved, those heavily entrenched and those with little knowledge of wrong doings (Podgor 2007: