White Collar Crime Essay

I. Introduction

There is a common belief within our society that white-collar criminals commit crimes and never suffer consequences for their actions. The public’s understanding of white-collar crime can often be attributed to the media’s portrayal of white-collar crimes. A basic definition of white-collar crime is “nonviolent crime committed by individuals or corporations to obtain personal or professional advantages.” White-collar crime is a part of the property crime category and it is in the subcategory of fraudulent crimes. Crimes that fall under white-collar crime include embezzlement, fraud, bribery, and insider trading. The federal government tends to prosecute most white-collar cases, therefore they can shed light on the true

Is the public’s perception correct? It turns out that common people are concerned about the wrong aspect of the justice system with regards to white-collar crime. White-collar crime is prosecuted about the same way that all other fraudulent crimes are; however, the majority of modern sentences for white-collar crime are extremely lenient.

II. Background

The prosecution and sentencing of white-collar crime has been drastically affected by the creation of and changes to the sentencing guidelines. In the 1970’s Yale performed a survey in order to determine how judges felt about white-collar crime. The study found that “Most judges share[d] a widespread belief that the suffering experienced by the white-collar person as a result of apprehension, public indictment and conviction, and the collateral disabilities incident to conviction—loss of job, professional licenses, and status in the community—completely satisfies the need to punish the individual.” This feeling among judges seems to have resulted in more lenient sentences for white-collar criminals. Legislators believed that judicial discretion in sentencing

These cases stated that judges’ obligation to sentence according to the guidelines violated the sixth amendment. The sixth amendment guarantees the right to speedy and public trial by jury, jurisdiction, right to a defense attorney, right to know the accusations against you and the right to face your accuser. In the first case, the United States v. Booker, Booker claimed that his sentence was unconstitutional, because the guidelines required the judge to sentence "based on additional facts that the sentencing judge found by a preponderance of the evidence," rather than the facts considered by the jury. In the district court, Freddie Booker was found guilty of possession of with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of “crack.” He was caught with 92.5 grams of crack cocaine in his possession. At sentencing, the district court judge sentenced Booker to 30 years in prison. He appealed the sentence and the court of appeals for the seventh circuit held that the sentence violated the sixth amendment, because the guidelines required the judge to “impose a sentence not solely based on facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant." In the next appeal, the Supreme Court concurred, stating “The court applied the Blakely v. Washington case they had ruled on a year prior and ‘concluded that Booker 's sentence violated the Sixth Amendment’ the Supreme Court vacated the judgment of the District Court, and