White Collar Crimes

Criminology J501: Tuesday
Assignment 11-Chapters 41, 42, & 43

Ch. 41, 42, & 43
The term white-collar was significant because it made people think of businessmen in suits, managerial positions, and executive positions who were normally thought of as respective businessmen and professionals, and this idea contradicted the dominant idea that criminals were mostly the lower class, the underemployed and came from impoverished communities. This idea was radical to suggest that upstanding white-collar workers were comparable to the lower-class thugs and low achieving citizens and to avoid criticism he insisted that his research was purely scientific. Sutherland claimed that there were immoral practices that went unchecked under the umbrella of business, politics, and professionals. He noted that just because a person was not arrested by a police officer did not mean they were not committing crimes. White-collar criminals have the resources and the power to shape the passage and enforcement of criminal statutes.
Sutherland shot down the previous ideas that crimes committed by respectable members of society did little damage; instead he inferred the misappropriation of thousands and millions of dollars. He stated that in comparison to the crimes known as “crime problems”, white-collar crimes are several times greater in cost and social relations that create distrust in the mass of people which lowers social morale and produces social disorganization on a large scale. Sutherland questioned the validity of existing theories describing criminals to be from lower class neighborhoods and claimed that the theories were flawed. He stated that just as gang members in a certain neighborhood teach the younger generations criminal behavior; the same happens in the business and political world. The executives teach new executives that schemes are a smart way of doing business. He exclaimed that the white-collar world was disorganized just as an inner city slum neighborhood. White collar crimes include: investigations of land offices, railways, insurance, munitions, banking, public utilities, stock exchanges, the oil industry, real estate, re-organization committees, receiverships, bankruptcies, and politics. Street crimes include: murder, assault, burglary, robbery, larceny, sex offenses, and drunkenness.
Criminologists have used the case histories and criminal statistics derived from the police, the criminal courts, and prisons as their main source of data to formulate their theories. Less than 2% of individuals committed to prisons in a year belong to the upper class. These theories state that since crime is concentrated in the lower class that it is caused by poverty or by personal and social characteristics believed to have a connection with poverty, weak-minded, psychopathic deviations, slum neighborhoods, and deteriorated families. Those who commit white-collar crimes normally start their careers in good neighborhoods, good homes, graduate from colleges with some idealism, and somehow get involved in sticky business scandals and are induced by their predecessors. Lower class criminals generally start their careers in deteriorated neighborhoods and have negative examples by peers, and community segregation from law-abiding people. This is a genetic explanation both of white-collar criminality and lower class criminality.
Whether a person becomes a criminal or not is largely determined by the comparative frequency and intimacy of his contacts with the two types of behavior. This may be called the process of differential association. Differential association culminates in crime because the community is not organized solidly against the criminal behavior. The law says one thing and the office environment encourages the schematic behavior. A business man who wants to obey the rules is driven by his competitors to adopt their methods. A teenage boy in an impoverished neighborhood that wants to earn money legally by working at McDonald’s is teased by peers and encouraged to sell drugs on the streets for more money and street credibility. Groups and individuals are more concerned with the groups’ interests than the right thing to do.
White collar criminals deny that they are criminals and do not consider themselves comparable to thugs or violent offenders. White collar criminals not consider their crimes as serious and do not really think they deserve punishment.