White collar crimes

White collar crime is a non-violent crime committed by someone typically for financial gain. The white collar crimes include blackmail bribery, credit card fraud, bank fraud, extortion, forgery, embezzlement, counterfeiting, insurance fraud, tax evasion, security fraud, investment schemes, and many more. According to Edwin Sutherland, he describes the white collar crime as a type of criminal activity committed by someone of high status and responsibility in the course of his occupation (Friedrichs, 2009).

White collar crime does encompass only criminal activity. Despite not being punishable in the criminal court, white collar crime is a crime. White collar crimes are usually complex and the extent, details, and duration of offending id difficult to determine the offense can be the sin of commission or omission with longer paper trail and cover-ups involved. Most of these crimes are highly organized, and they involve several participants with different degrees of responsibility (Gottschalk, 2013). Thus, it tends to be difficult to determine who is responsible. We consider white collar crime as a crime because it involves the violation of law where there is injury to the public or even a member of the public (Friedrichs, 2009). Some white collar crimes tend to affect the public health or even the environment rather than an individual victim. White collar crimes encompass criminal activities. For instance, corruption usually involves the exchange of favors or money in which the criminal element, in this case, is the abuse of trust. The effect of the crime is on the legitimacy of the institution such as the public service, business, or political organization. It is possible to contrast the crime with the direct, immediate, and measurable victimization involve in, for instance, a robbery or an assault.

Bad conduct is behaving in an irresponsible manner that is bad, unfair, and wrong and does harm others. Bad conducts tend to harm others in the same way as criminal behavior, and bad conduct tend to damage the reputation and trust of a company. Bad conduct is not a white collar crime; however, just like white collar crime, it usually goes unnoticed because of its non-violent nature. The damage caused by the bad conduct is equal to that caused by white-collar crime when there is loss of investor’s trust and impairment of confidence. Just like in the case of white collar crime, the victims may not be obvious, and the reaction to bad conduct is usually less severe (Weisburd & Schlegel 1994). However, damage caused by bad conduct and white collar crime is equal to that of violent crimes.

White collar crime is not usually punished in the criminal court mostly because of lack of intent. Despite being a crime, the ambiguous legal and criminal status of the crime is a characteristic that relates to its treatment in the criminal justice process. Situations, where there is diffusion of responsibility there, tend to be a lack of intent. In this situation, the moral element important in the definition of the crime is absent; thus, not punishable in the criminal court (Gottschalk, 2013).

The victim’s lack of awareness and complexity and invisibility of offenses make it difficult to detect white collar crimes, and the difficulty in obtaining evidence and attributing responsibility make the offense difficult to prosecute. As a result, it leads to a low rate of detection and prosecution. White collar crimes are crimes; however, the difference in the legal processing of the crime relate to their particular characteristics.

Reference

Gottschalk, P (2013). Policing white collar crime CRC Press.

Weisburd, D & Schlegel, K (1994). White-collar crime reconsidered Northeastern University Press.

Friedrichs, D (2009). Trusted criminals Cengage Learning.

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