Transcript White Collar Crime ohps File

White-Collar Crime
Edwin Sutherland (1949) defined whitecollar crime as:“a crime committed by a person of
respectability and high social status in
the course of his occupation.”
2 Types of White-Collar Crime
• Occupational – crimes committed at the
expense of the organisation eg stealing
from the employer.
• Corporate – crimes committed on behalf
of the organisation eg non-payment of
VAT.
Examples of Corporate Crime
• Selling food which is unfit for human
consumption.
• Manufacturing or selling of dangerous
goods.
• Box claims that mechanical defects in the
Ford Pinto may have led to between 500
and 900 deaths in the USA yet the
company was fully aware of the defects.
Examples of Corporate Crime
• Failing to meet health and safety
regulations which can lead to the injury
or death of employees.
• Environmental offences
• False accounting or insurance fraud.
Views of Corporate Crime
Treated differently by the Police, courts,
public and regulatory bodies because:• Low visibility
• Complexity
• Difficult to allocate blame to particular
individuals
• ‘crimes without victims’
Croall, 2001
Compared to many other forms of crime,
corporate crime has a lower rate of
detection and prosecution and more lenient
punishments.
Explanations
Personality-based
• Gross (1978) found that individuals who
had been successful in large companies
tended to be ambitious, see their own
success in terms of the company’s success
and they had an ‘undemanding moral
code’.
Anomie
• Box (1983) used Merton’s version of anomie.
He argued that if an organisation is unable to
achieve its goals using socially approved
methods then it may turn to other, possibly
illegal, methods of achieving its goal.
• Braithwaite studied the pharmaceutical
industry that scientists were willing to fabricate
their results in order to have their products
adopted by their companies. Motivated by
financial greed and the desire for scientific
prestige.
Marxist
• Fits the view that the real criminals are
the rich and powerful.
• Pearce – in monetary terms the criminal
activities of the working-class are small
compared with the huge sums pocketed
by private enterprise.
• Chamblis claimed that crime is
widespread in every stratum in society.
• The occasional prosecution of the rulingclass provides the fiction that the law
operates for the benefit of society as a
whole.
• Young claimed that the media supports
the status quo.
• Workers have gained concessions
through TUs but strikers are portrayed
in a negative light.
• Drugs use of hippies and teenagers is
condemned yet 72 million tablets used
each year legally.
• Young also claimed that capitalism was a
system based on competition and
personal gain.
• There is hostility and frustration for the
losers.
• Members of each stratum use whatever
means they can.
Subcultural
• Some sociologists argue that many
corporations, especially financial
institutions, have a subculture which
emphases the pursuit of wealth and
profit.
• Places high value on risk-taking and
monetary success.