White Collar Crime Exam 1 Notes Financial Crime and White Collar Crime What constitutes WCC Ex Deaths associated with an earthquake would appear to be unrelated to WCC Consequence of greedy developers paying off corrupt governmental inspectors to evade proper building codes Is greed a good thing Is corruption ever justified White Collar Crime vs Financial Crimes WCC organization level Committed on behalf of the company examples a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation Sutherland Corporate Crimes are insider trading anti trust conspiracies and illegal accounting practices against employers or consumers Financial Crimes financially driven ex jewel heists art theft tax refund fraud identity theft not committed through the course of one s work crimes are Individual level Committed through one s profession typically Occupational Crimes Civil vs Criminal Civil disputes between individuals regarding legal duties and responsibilities 1 The wronged party files the case 2 Result in monetary damages and orders no jail time 3 Standard of proof is the preponderance of the evidence less blameworthy 4 Many cases decided by a judge not a jury 5 Must pay for an attorney or rep themselves 6 Not protected against illegal searches seizures 4th Criminal offenses against the state prosecuted by the state 1 Can have jail time and or monetary punishments 2 Must be beyond a reasonable doubt to convict 3 Almost always allow for a jury of peers 4 Entitled to an attorney provided one even if they can t afford it Criminal has greater consequences so defendants are afforded more protections Ex OJ Simpson case Why study WCC 1 A serious problem in our society costs more in damage than property crimes 2 Affects everyone large of victims 3 Learn more about all types of crimes 4 Develop effective prevention invention policies 5 Potential careers 6 Insight into current culture and subculture The Nature of WCC Obtaining Statistics on Conventional Crime Primary sources of data on conventional crime Complex Involves organizations Numerous individuals in different positions Complicated transactions carried out over long periods of time Because this field of study is complex one must understand Economics Management Official statistics Uniform Crime Reports UCR Compiled by the FBI from individual police agency reports Provides raw counts of events NO additional information Includes data on 1 Offenses own to the police 2 Detailed homicide data SHR 3 Crimes cleared by arrest 4 Persons arrested National Incident Based Reporting System NIBRS UCR 2 0 6 White Collar Crime categories Includes information about offense parties involved and property stolen if any Provides information on 57 offenses as well as their circumstances players and location National Crime Victimization Survey NCVS nationally representative sample of households Conducted annually since 1973 by the Census Bureau Provides information on Number of offenses The victim The offender The offense time place weapons used nature of injury and economic consequences DOES NOT collect information regarding WCC s Obtaining Statistics on WCC No real WCC equivalent to UCR or NCVS data Date must be obtained from various sources such as Governmental agency and annual financial reports Newspapers Journals Independent surveys Grandfather of WCC Sutherland Sutherland introduced the term white collar crime in 1939 Although early scholars such as Cesare Beccaria 1764 and Karl Marx 1848 recognized that the great and rich committed acts that caused immense public injury One of the first systematic explorations of specific forms of WCC Focused on the 70 largest U S manufacturing mining and mercantile corporations The Discovery of White Collar Crime Sutherland 1940 in ASR Examined Restraint of trade violations Unfair labor practices Fraudulent advertising Illegal rebates Sutherland 1940 Key Points 1 White collar criminality is real criminality 2 The financial cost of WCC is higher than street crime 3 WCC differs from other criminality because of differences in criminal law which separates them 4 Theories that assume crime is due to poverty are invalid E A Ross was a prominent sociologist the criminaloid The business man who commits illegal acts out of a desire to maximize profit while hiding behind a fa ade of respectability and piety Ross regarded these criminaloids are guilty of moral insensibility He also held them directly responsible for unnecessary deaths of consumers and workers Defining White Collar Crime Criminologists who study white collar crime have generally agreed that it 1 Occurs in a legitimate occupational context 2 3 Is motivated by the objective of economic gain or occupational success Is not characterized by direct intentional violence Age Class More likely to be middle aged or older Start offending at a later age WCC includes action of corporate executives physicians and entrepreneurs which usually take longer to obtain their status As originally conceived by Sutherland 1940 White Collar is the crime of the upper or better off class It is not the crime of the poor Payne 2013 Race Gender Minorities are highly unlikely to be charged with such WCC as antitrust or corporate wrongdoing Although they are well represented among low level WCC such as embezzlement and fraud Female arrest rate for WCC has been of the male arrest rate The male dominance of corporations explains the overall discrepancy or under representation of female offenders More likely to be better educated more likely to be married and have a stable family situation and more likely than conventional crime offenders to have community groups and church affiliations The Role of the Media Crucial source of our understanding of crime because relatively few people are victims of criminal behavior Crime is portrayed in the media with an emphasis on sensational violent crimes This serves the ideological function of deflecting attention from the structural and political sources of crime Reporting of corporate crime did not generally attribute criminal wrongdoing to the corporation For example the death of coal miners in Virginia was classified as a safety violation rather than criminal negligence Newspaper coverage of corporate crime cases remains quite limited President Clinton s sex scandals received more television coverage than the Watergate political corruption case More dramatic crime stories receive greater coverage even if they are less