White-Collar Crimes

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White-Collar Crimes

• Ashley Kloss

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What Is It??

• A white-collar crime is defined as "a crime
  committed by a person of respectability and high
  social status in the course of his occupation"
  Fraud, bribery, inside trading, embezzlement,
  computer crimes, and forgery are all accessible
  to white-collar employees.

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2 types

• Occupational crime which occurs when crimes are
  committed to promote personal interests. An
  example would be. altering records.
• Organizational or corporate crime which occurs
  when corporate executives commit criminal acts to
  benefit their company by overcharging or price
  fixing, false advertising, etc.

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A Brief History

• The term was coined by Edward Sutherland in 1939.
• He used it to set a line between white-collar
  crimes and regular street crimes
• White-collar crime is generally new and it came
  about around the time following the Great
  Depression.
• People wanted to gain their money and social
  status back. Also many people were angry at the
  economy status and felt they were underpaid. This
  led to the development of white-collar crime.

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• It is estimated that the harm done to society by
  white-collar crime is greater than street crime,
  yet most people are not concerned about this form
  of deviance. It is estimated that 300 billion is
  stolen annually from the US.
• It is typically dealt with in terms of civil law
  instead of criminal law. Civil law refers to
  general regulations involving economic losses
  between private parties and criminal law deals
  with specific laws that define every individual's
  moral responsibility to society.

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Why Is It Committed?

• Most people do not start out as criminals. Most
  white-collar crimes involve normal people who are
  struggling financially. It is just as common in
  bigger corporations as stealing is in a poor
  community.
• Greed is another influence on this crime. Many
  people with high ranking jobs tend to desire
  wealth and will do anything to obtain it.
• Also, more people are beginning to think that
  committing these crimes is acceptable because
  they have been around the corruption for long
  periods of time.

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• Many people get away with white-collar crime more
  so than regular street crimes. It is a fact that
  almost no police effort goes into stopping it and
  people are rarely convicted.
• Reasons for this are that these people may have
  power because they have friends in politics, they
  have money to get the best lawyer, or they
  usually have friends in the law-enforcement
  agencies.
• Also it can be hard to pinpoint the problem if
  more than one person in a corporation is
  involved.
• When a crime is discovered, suspects usually get
  a light punishment because violence wasnt used.

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What Is Being Done to Stop It?

• Government agencies such as the US States
  Environmental Protection Agency checks up upon
  corporations from time to time