Zero in on a 45 year-old mother of 13. A man comes to her with a proposal. Invest in his company, and he can guarantee 100%, 200%, possibly even 300% returns on what she gives in mere months. For her this means taking out a second mortgage on her house; the same house she hopes to pay off entirely with the promised large return on her investment. Two years later, the windows of the house are boarded up and the woman recounts to reporters the chilling details behind the reason her family has no place to spend Thanksgiving this year. Her money is gone, along with her hopes of ever retiring from the two jobs she works. Stories like this are heard all too often from victims of white-collar crime. “Lying, cheating, and stealing. That’s white-collar crime in a nutshell. The term- reportedly coined in 1939- is now synonymous with the full range of frauds committed by business and government professionals” (FBI, n.d.). White-collar criminals are not holding a gun to anyone’s back demanding wallets and valuables. Instead, they gain the trust of those they prey on. Worse, they use their status in society to build comfort in their victims’ minds. A few of the best-known schemes in U.S. history are Enron, WorldCom, and the massive Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. These three cases alone amount to losses upwards of 70 billion dollars. The victims in each case are the same, American citizens. White-collar crime in America is insufficiently controlled due to weak laws, a broad pool of victims, and the enormous power scale of those involved.
Some in the business world would argue that the recently intensified sentencing guidelines for white-collar crime provide sufficient punishment for the criminals involved. However, with the increase if the promi...
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...tter. White-collar crime must stop being seen as a nonviolent, gentle class of crime. Programs, laws, and guidelines must be put into place to protect the citizens these seemingly trustworthy, high-class criminals prey on.
Works Cited
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Ettore, B. (1994). Crime and punishment: A hard look at white-collar crime. (cover story). Management Review, 83(5), 10.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (n.d.) White-Collar Crime. Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/white_collar
Holtfreter, K., Van Slyke, S., Bratton, J., & Gertz, M. (2008). Public perceptions of white-collar crime and punishment. Journal Of Criminal Justice, 36(1), 50-60. doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2007.12.006
Podgor, E. S. (2007). The Challenge of White Collar Sentencing. Journal Of Criminal Law & Criminology, 97(3), 731-759.
The news article that I decided to do my assignment on is about a bank manager, Debra Anne Chapin, that embezzled 2 million dollars from a bank. The news article’s title is, “Former manager jailed for cheating bank out of $2M; Woman used cash to pay bills, gamble and feed her cocaine habit.” The crime took place in Calgary between June 1, 2006 and June, 30 2008. This embezzlement is a classic case of white collar crime and demonstrates numerous criminological theories.
With the evolution of our economy and technology we have experienced a new wave of crime and it’s not by the low level street criminals you would expect, but high end, tie wearing business men and women. Merriam-Webster defines crime as “an act or the commission of an act that is forbidden or the omission of a duty that is commanded by a public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law” (Merriam-Webster). There are many types of crime but the two this paper will focus on are white collar crime and its comparison to street crime. You won’t find an official definition of street crime, but it’s normally thought of as theft, robbery, car theft, arson, drug dealing, and vandalism. The phrase “white-collar crime” was first
Shover, N, & Hochstetler, A. (2006). Choosing white-collar crime. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
White-collar crime is the financially motivated illegal acts that are committed by the middle and upper class through their legitimate business or government activities. This form of crime was first coined by Edwin Sutherland in 1939 as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” (Linden, 2016). Crime has often been associated with the lower class due to economic reasons. However, Sutherland stressed that the Criminal Justice System needed to acknowledge illegal business activity as crime due to the repercussions they caused and the damage they can cause to society (Linden, 2016). Crime was prevalently thought to only be
Schanzenbach, Max; Yaeger, Michael L., (2006). Prison time, fines, and federal white-collar criminals: The anatomy of a racial disparity. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 96(2), p757-793. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Even if it is not revealed as it should be, White Collar Crimes are more common that people think. The fact that they do not do report it is because many political and economical interests are invested on those kinds of “businesses”. One of the differences between White Collar Crimes and regular crimes is that there are not punishments for this kind of crimes. Even though a White Collar criminal and a thief have the same goal: To steal people’s money. People are committing the same act, but because depending on who they are and how you look like they will have less and even any type if punishment because it is usual that people with “high economical standards”. All of the definition of deviant or not is influenced again on social power both social and
White collar and corporate crimes are crimes that many people do not associate with criminal activity. Yet the cost to the country due to corporate and white collar crime far exceeds that of “street” crime and benefit fraud. White collar and corporate crimes refer to crimes that take place within a business or institution and include everything from Tax fraud to health and safety breaches.
This case illustrated that there were real consequences to white collar crime. In addition to paying the fifty million dollar fine, he relinquished another fifty million dollars of his illegal trading profits. (He still had millions remaining, however, from his illegal gains.) His actual prison sentence was three years, yet he served only twenty-two months in the federal prison at Lompoc, California, which was known to have a “country-club” atmosphere.
Shelden, R.G., Brown, W.B., Miller, K.S., & Fritzler, R.B. (2008). Crime and criminal justice in american society. Long Grove, Illinosis: Waveland Press, INC.
The foundation of our country, the keystone to our democratic system, is the integrity of social institutions that we not only assume we can trust but have come to rely on for most aspects in our daily lives. The integrity of these social institutions can only be achieved through building blocks such as internal controls and independent, verifiable information. White collar criminals build a sense of false integrity around them in order to gain the trust of their victims, ranging from the young to the very old. Friedrich’s (2010) Trusted Criminals defines the foundation to white collar crime, the level of trust we have for those in power. We trust those in charge, those with power, and those who represent the integrity of our social institutions.
White collar crime is distinctly different from traditional frauds committed by ordinary citizen, because it involves business and government professionals that have a high social status in the community, such as those on Wall Street, even though it is financially motivated in nature. White collar crime is one of those topics that is rarely broadcasted by the media, because it is often swept under the rug to keep the general public from knowing due to the crimes being under prosecuted. Unfortunately, for the last 20 years the prosecution of white collar crimes has been significantly decreasing. To put into to perspective, the prosecution of white collar crimes has decreased by 36 percent; however, President Obama emphasized that he will hold
A pale amount of criminological research, which focuses on the public attitude toward crime and the public’s opinion on white-collar crime, has been done. Cullen and colleagues were one of the first to study public attitudes about white-collar crime. In there study they surveyed 240 adults and assessed various perceptions about this behavior. The researchers found that the sample “supported criminal sanctions for white-collar offenders, viewed white-collar crimes as having greater moral and economic cost than street crimes, and did not define the offenses as violent” (sagepub.com). Similar results were found in other studies. In a more recent survey conducted by the NW3C, they decided to touch upon several perception dimensions when conducting
“Money, the pure motivation and reasoning behinds the acts of committing white collar crimes” (Coenen). Tracy Coenen states that white-collar crimes are always financially motivated and the motivation for the person or persons committing the crime is almost always the end goal of a big payout. The Federal Bureau of Investigation official website places insurance fraud, identity theft, health care fraud, counterfeiting, bank fraud, and ponzi schemes as the most frequent and dangerous on its list of white-collar crimes. Day by day white-collar crimes become more sophisticated than imaginable and are starting to occur on a regular basis all over the world. Although white-collar crimes are nonviolent, it’s now become just as dangerous where even a
White-collar crimes and organizational structure are related because white collar-crimes thrive in organizations that have weak structures. According to Price and Norris (2009), the elites who commit white collar-crimes usually exploit weaknesses in organizational structure and formulate rules and regulations that favor their crimes. Makansi (2010) examines case studies to prove that white-collar crime is dependent on organizational structure. For example, the financial crisis that Merchant Energy Business faced in 2001-2002 occurred due to the liberal Financial Accounting Board, which failed to provide a standard model of valuing natural gas and fuel. Moreover, a financial crisis that rocked the securitization market in 2008 was due to fraudulence in the pricing of securitization products. These examples ...
STOP RIGHT THERE! White collar crimes are bad, maybe not as bad as other crimes. But, they are still bad! White collar crimes are a financially motivated nonviolent crime committed by business and government professionals. People seem to think, that white collar crimes are not that big of a deal. Others think that they are, people have their title to their own opinions. In my opinion, white collar crimes are bad, any crime is. Do I think it is as bad as other crimes? No, but you do the crime, you pay the time is how I see it. What do you think?