Two (For Prof S)

betheman87

trusted_criminals_1.ppt

Home >Literature homework help >Two (For Prof S)

WHITE COLLAR CRIME IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY 4TH ED.

CHAPTER 1

THE DISCOVERY OF WHITE COLLAR CRIME

Trusted Criminals

Introduction

Public perceptions of white collar crimes tend to be more conflicted and confused than are perceptions of conventional forms of crime

Introduction

Consider the following:
A pharmacist is convicted of diluting cancer drugs to enhance his profits
A bookkeeper embezzles from her employer to pay her bills
A priest is charged with stealing over a half million dollars in church funds
The world’s largest retailer is accused of using illegal immigrant workers and cheating them on wages
A major defense contractor, formerly headed by the VP of the U.S., is investigated for overcharging the government on Iraq contracts and cheating retirees on pensions

Introduction

What do these situations have in common?

1. They do not include the forms of crime that typically come to mind when people think of crime (murder, theft, etc.)

2. The offenders or offending organizations enjoy a relatively high level of trust and respectability, at least when compared with organized crime and street criminals

Introduction

What do these situations have in common? (Con’t)

3. These situations have not been a traditional focus of the law and the justice system, which have responded to them in various ways

4. They have all been considered forms of white collar crime, according to at least someone’s conception of that complex term

Introduction

The term white collar crime is familiar to many people
It is also a source of confusion
Deaths associated with an earthquake would appear to be a natural catastrophe and unrelated to white collar crime
But the government report of the quake indicated that much of the loss of life could be attributed to shoddy building construction
A consequence of greedy developers paying off corrupt governmental inspectors to evade proper building codes

Edwin H. Sutherland

Given credit for introducing the term white collar crime in literature in 1939

Was inspired by E.A. Ross’s Sin and Society: An Analysis of Latter Day Iniquity

Sutherland alluded to “crime in the upper or white-collar class, composed of respectable or at least respected business and professional men”

E.A. Ross

Was a prominent sociologist of his time
Promoted the notion of “the criminaloid”
The business man who commits illegal acts out of a desire to maximize profit, while hiding behind a façade of respectability and piety
Ross regarded these criminaloids as guilty of moral insensibility
He also held them directly responsible for unnecessary deaths of consumers and workers

The Discovery of White Collar Crime

Sutherland’s examples of white collar criminality in business included various forms of:
Misrepresentation
Manipulation
Embezzlement
Bribery

He also pointed out that the white collar classes have both the special influence on the formation of criminal laws and various means of minimizing the chances of criminal convictions

The Discovery of White Collar Crime

In the 1940’s, Sutherland undertook a major study

In his book, he focused on the 70 largest U.S. manufacturing, mining, and mercantile corporations with the respect of the legal decision against them concerning allegations of wrongdoing which included:
Restraint-of-trade violations
Infringement of patent and other rights
Unfair labor practices
Fraudulent advertising
Illegal rebates

Defining White Collar Crime

There are a variety of terms that have been used to characterize activities that could either be classified under the broad rubric of white collar crime or closely linked with it:
Elite deviance, economic crime, business crime, consumer crime, political crime, government crime, state or state-organized crime, corporate crime, occupational crime, workplace crime, technocrime, and computer crime are just a few terms used

Defining White Collar Crime

Criminologists who study white collar crime have generally agreed that it:

Occurs in a legitimate occupational context

Is motivated by the objective of economic gain or occupational success

Is not characterized by direct, intentional violence

Defining White Collar Crime

In 1996, the author of Trusted Criminals and 14 other white collar crime scholars were invited to the National White Collar Crime Center
They met for 3 days in Morgantown, West Virginia
They were to discuss the definitional dilemma pertaining to white collar crime
One day at lunch, one of the scholars wrote a definition on a napkin and passed it around for others to make amendments and revisions

Defining White Collar Crime

The resulting definition read as:
“White collar crimes are illegal or unethical acts that violate fiduciary responsibility of public trust committed by an individual or organization, usually during the course of legitimate occupational activity, by persons of high or respectable social status for personal or organizational gain”

A Multistage Approach to Defining White Collar Crime

A meaningful understanding of white collar crime must be approached in stages:

The 1st stage definitional stage is polemical

The 2nd stage is typological

The 3rd stage is operational

This conception challenges a popular tendency to associate criminality with inner-city residents, minorities, young men, and conventional illegal activities such as homicide, robbery and burglary

A Multistage Approach to Defining White Collar Crime

In the 2nd stage, the purpose of criminological typology is to organize patterns of crime and criminal behavior into coherent categories to facilitate both explaining and responding to crime

Occupational crime - defined by Clinard and Quinney
Violation of the legal codes in the course of activity in a legitimate occupation
They consider this to be a more useful definition than Sutherland’s which is restricted to high-status offenders

A Multistage Approach to Defining White Collar Crime

Clinard and Quinney designated corporate crime as but one form of occupational crime

Corporate crime
Offenses committed by corporate officials for their corporation and the offenses of the corporation itself

Typologies provide a necessary point of departure for any meaningful discussion of white collar crime

A Multistage Approach to Defining White Collar Crime

The principal criteria for differentiating between the types of white collar crime are as follows:
Context in which illegal activity occurs, including the setting and the level within the setting
Status or position of offender
Primary victims
Principal form of harm
Legal classification

A Multistage Approach to Defining White Collar Crime

The 3rd stage for defining white collar crime can be called operational

On this level, the objective of the definition is to provide a point of departure for focused empirical research or comparative critical analysis

A Multistage Approach to Defining White Collar Crime

The concept of white collar crime is like a Chinese puzzle

It is most easily defined in negative terms:
It refers to illegal or harmful activity that is neither street crime nor conventional crime

Trust and White Collar Crime

The term trust refers to confidence in a relationship that the other party will act honorably and fulfill legitimate expectations

This applies to corporations that employ us, banks where we deposit money, stockholders with whom we invest, retail businesses from which we purchase goods, physicians from whom we seek treatment, and so forth

Trust and White Collar Crime

The diffusion of impersonal trust into a broad range of relationships and transactions creates countless opportunities for corruption, misrepresentation, and fraud

The extension of trust thus appears to be both unavoidable and necessary in a modern society

Trust and its violation are certainly key elements of white collar crime

Respectability and White Collar Crime

Respectability is not easily defined

Can be faked and not linked with specific norms for acceptable behavior

Dictionary definitions include:
Worthy of esteem
Of good standing
Proper or decent
Of moderate excellence
Of considerable size

Respectability and White Collar Crime

For the purpose of this class, we have 3 different meanings:

A normative meaning or an assessment of moral integrity

A status-related meaning, a legitimate position or occupation

A symptomatic meaning or the outward appearance of acceptable or superior status

Respectability and White Collar Crime

The successful con artist projects an appearance of respectability but lacks either the required moral qualities or sufficient status

The more respectable people appear to be, the more likely they are to be trusted

The more respectable people appear to be, the less likely they will be suspected of committing serious crimes

Respectability and White Collar Crime

Societies have ceremonies or rituals wherein respectable status is publicly acknowledged
Graduations

Other ceremonies, called degradation ceremonies, strip people of their respectable status
The criminal trial

Risk and White Collar Crime

Risk - a wager or the probability of an event occurring; great danger and alludes to negative outcomes exclusively

Risk applies to white collar crime as a calculated gamble is taken

The chances of being caught and punished are quite remote compared with the benefits that accrue from committing the crime

Risk and White Collar Crime

In most cases, the risk strongly favors the offender because the probability of detections, prosecution and sanctioning is typically low

One distinctive element of much white collar crime is the absence of the specific intent to cause harm

The harm of much white collar crime is a function of making the pursuit or economic efficiency paramount over all other objectives

Risk and White Collar Crime

The things we fear will harm us most often pose the least actual risk and vice versa

Charles Perrow (1984) coined the term normal accident to refer to the accidents that complex modern technological systems inevitably produce

Serious efforts to impose legal controls on many important sources of societal risk date only back to the mid 1960s

Risk and White Collar Crime

Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration were created in response to impose legal controls on societal risk

Corporations are more likely to take certain types of risks if they have reason to believe they can get away with it

Risk and White Collar Crime

Corporations tend to accept higher levels of risk to employees than to the general public because accidents involving the public are more likely to get media attention

Some suggest that the September 11, 2001 attacks might have been prevented if airlines had not been trying to save money on passenger screening procedures

Risk and White Collar Crime

Other professionals, such as stockbrokers, may expose their clients to excessive financial risks to increase their own income from commissions

Criminal charges are quite uncommon in such cases due to the often formidable difficulty of demonstrating criminal intent

Age

White collar criminals are more likely to be middle-aged or older and to begin their offending at a later age

The definition of white collar crimes includes actions of corporate executives, physicians and entrepreneurs

They are typically middle-aged or older

Age

Juveniles that are employed commit work-related offenses such as:
Shortchanging customers
Giving away goods
Stealing from their employer

Such “occupational delinquency” tends to incorporate relatively minor forms of white collar crime

Class

As originally conceived of by Sutherland, white collar crime is the crime of the upper or better-off class
It is not the crime of the poor
Occupational crime offenders are often middle class and in the broadest application, illegality is committed in the context of a legitimate occupation
It may even be lower-class individuals employed in minimum wag jobs

Class

Yale University project on white collar crime examined the membership of those formally charged with white collar offenses

They declared white collar crime to be principally crimes of the middle class

Class

Yale’s findings:
Social status and class are much less of a factor in determining the seriousness of white collar crime than is control over organizational structures and resources

Managers are often more directly implicated in the most serious white collar crimes than are owners

White collar crime offenders are significantly more likely to be middle and upper class than are conventional crime offenders

Race

Over 25% of those arrested for index crimes in the U.S. are African Americans
Although this group only constitutes about 12% of the American population

African Americans and other minorities are highly unlikely to be charged with such white collar crimes as antitrust or corporate wrongdoing
Although they are well represented among low-level white collar crime offenders guilty of embezzlement and fraud

Race

The kinds of fraud for which African American arrest rates are significantly higher than those of whites are often not occupation related
Including welfare fraud

Gender

Males greatly outnumber females among conventional crime offenders
Data indicates that the female arrest rate for white collar crimes has been one quarter or one fifth of the male arrest rate
The male dominance of corporations and outside-the-home occupations, especially the more powerful positions, would seem to be clearly the single most important factor explaining the overall discrepancy or underrepresentation of female offenders

Other Demographic Variables and Differences

White collar crime offenders are more likely to be employed
As employment is virtually by definition a precondition for the commission of white collar crimes
More likely to be better educated
Older and more likely to be middle-class and employed
More likely to be married and have a stable family situation
More likely than conventional crime offenders to have community groups and church affiliations

Criminal Careers

The large proportion of conventional crime offenders “age out” of such activity
As they get older, they are less likely to engage in such activities as robbery or auto theft
These offenders have commonly been regarded as committing only one form of white collar crime
The offense is typically viewed as a relatively isolated incident in a legitimate occupational career
With the crime not being repeated after the offender has been caught

The Social Movement Against White Collar Crime

Emerging movements on behalf of minorities, consumers, and the environment highlighted social inequities and injustices and fed into increasing attention to white collar crime

The Conflict Theory directed more attention to the crimes of the state and the economic elites and to the disproportionate role of the rich and the powerful in the lawmaking process

The Social Movement Against White Collar Crime

Katz argued that a variety of “moral entrepreneurs” both responded to and measurably raised public consciousness about white collar crime

Moral entrepreneurs are those who condemn a form of behavior and are in a position to mobilize people to demand legal action in response to it

The Role of the Media

The media are a crucial source of our understanding of crime because few people experience a wide variety of crime firsthand

Crime is portrayed in the media, with an emphasis on sensational, especially violent, crimes

This serves the ideological function of deflecting attention from the structural and political sources of crime

The Role of the Media

Reporting of corporate crime did not generally attribute criminal wrongdoing to the corporation
In the recent era, newspaper coverage of corporate crime cases remains quite limited
Television coverage of these crimes concentrated mainly on the stories’ early stages and the final stages
In the 1990s, sex scandals involving President Clinton received more television coverage than the Whitewater political corruption case or any of the corporate cases surfacing during this period

The Role of the Media

From 2001 on, corporate scandal cases were periodically big news stories, but ultimately were overshadowed by the war in Iraq and other stories

More dramatic crime stories receive greater coverage even if they are less objectively consequential

The reporting of white collar crime seems to have a smaller impact on the audience than does the reporting of conventional violence

The Role of the Media

There are a few explanations on why there is little coverage of white collar crimes:

There is more indirect harm experienced by individual victims

Public resistance to viewing corporations as criminal

Large and wealthy media organizations may not be inclined to link other large and wealthy organizations with criminality

Exposing White Collar Crime

White collar crime, as a rule, is less visible than conventional crime
Most conventional crime does not occur in public places (the street)
It comes to the attention of police because victims and witnesses report it and the police even observe some of it directly
White collar crime is generally far less visible
It takes place in suits, not streets
Many of its victims are not clearly aware that a crime has been perpetrated against them

Informers & Whistleblowers

Informers - provide criminal justice system personnel with crucial information that can lead to the investigation, arrest, indictment and conviction of law violators
They have provided information in exchange for payment, a favorable arrangement concerning criminal charges against themselves, or both
In white collar crime cases, the use of informers is often indispensable

Informers & Whistleblowers

Inappropriate lenience may be extended to informers who themselves have committed serious crime

Informers may use their status as informers to commit additional crimes with some sense of immunity

Cases against major offenders often cannot be made without the assistance of informers

Some informers turn out to be manipulative con men

Informers & Whistleblowers

Whistleblower - is a related crucial source of information needed for the detection, and ultimately the prosecution, of many white collar crimes

Although whistleblowers have in common with informers an insider’s perspective on the illegal activity
Whistleblowers are not criminally implicated

Informers & Whistleblowers

White collar criminals may work with colleagues and associates who are not committed to the illegal activity or are directly opposed to it

Most of these associates will not “blow the whistle” for many reasons:
Self-preservation ethos
Fear of social ostracism
Reverse whistleblowing

Informers & Whistleblowers

Women have been especially conspicuous among whistleblowers in the corporate scandals of the 2000’s

The term whistleblower has been most typically applied to those who inform outside agencies or entities of illegal or unethical actions of their company

Informers & Whistleblowers

Workers tend to support whistleblowers when direct threats to their health and well-being have been exposed

When the dangers are less direct or imminent and the whistleblower may jeopardize jobs or the local economy, workers are much less likely to be supportive

Informers & Whistleblowers

Whistleblowers pay a substantial price for their courageous actions
Retaliation
Traumatic personal consequences
Suicide
Divorce
Loss of a home

All which have been attributed to fallout from whistleblowing

Informers & Whistleblowers

In some cases, whistleblowers have been shot or even murdered
Some have been dismissed from their jobs and sued for multimillion-dollar damages or reinstatement
In rare cases they have even been formally vindicated by their company, complete with high-level apologies for their suffering
More often they must move on to new jobs and careers