White Collar Crime In Canada

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Introduction In 2014, the RCMP started an investigation into the cost overruns in the Winnipeg Police HQ project. The project was finished four years late at $79 million over the original budget and had been subjected to two external audits in addition to the current RCMP investigation. At the time, mention was also made that a payment made to a member of the Winnipeg city council was part of the probe (CBC, 2014). In response to the news, Brian Bowman, mayor of the City of Winnipeg, has assured that ‘heads should roll’ if these allegations of city council member involvement in fraudulent business is proven to be true (CBC, 2014).
Two years down the road, the investigation is still in process, and although questionable financial activity …show more content…

Since his introduction of white-collar crime in 1939, the concept has become an increasingly familiar term among academia as well as law-enforcement agencies and the general public. However, attempts to address the issue remain fraught with complexities. Regarding the measurability of white-collar crime; the subtleties and complexities combined with the possibility of masking illegal activities with perfectly legal behaviour creates the possibility of a dark figure of crime that may be higher than that of general street crime (Shapiro, 1985). The vague line between what constitutes outright fraudulent crime and shady business, civil and criminal cases, and not to mention the range of actions that could be classified as white collar crime, make the concept ambiguous and undefined despite Sutherland’s (1940) classification. Furthermore, besides the initial difficulty in defining white collar crime, there is the constant struggle and failure by public police agencies to obtain criminal convictions in the area of corporate crime that asks for …show more content…

I argue that social class indirectly affects conviction likelihood through the influence on police investigations and the public’s perception of the accused. Furthermore, the role of social class is not as simplistic as some may think. It plays a more nuanced role in the lack of convictions and does not necessarily have a direct influence. In other words, it is not the case that the rich can commit crimes with impunity. In addition, while I maintain that while social class does influence conviction likelihood in white collar crime, there are other factors that may have been neglected but that also play a role in the process of white collar crime investigation, public perception, and the probability of conviction. To develop a comprehensive understanding of the lack of white-collar crime convictions, it is essential to consider all these variables, including social class, and the way they affect perception and investigations. Social class is not the only factor influencing investigations, perception, and conviction, although it is a major influence. There are other factors that can also account partly for the lack of conviction likelihood due to the influence they have on perception and

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