White collar crimes

1
White collar crimes

• Elite crimes
• Crimes of the powerful

2
Occupational crimes

• Offences committed by individuals for themselves
  in the course of their occupations and the
  offences of employees against their employers
  (Clinard and Quinney 1973).
• A typical example of which is embezzlement,
  involving offenders, either individually or in
  groups, engaging in illegal or rule-breaking
  activities for personal gain at the expense of
  consumers, clients or employers.

3
Organizational crimes

• Illegal organizational behaviour which is a form
  of collective rule breaking in order to achieve
  the organizational goals.
• A typical example is the neglect of safety
  regulations, which does not involve personal
  gain, but may be seen as being for the good of
  the organization by enhancing profitability or
  efficiency.

4

• Characteristics of white collar crimes

5
Low visibility

• An essential feature of white-collar offences is
  that they take place under the cover of normal
  occupational routines (Shapiro, 1990), and
  involve the exploitation of occupational
  expertise or organizational system. They can
  therefore be readily disguised as business
  offenders are legitimately present at the scene
  (Clarke, 1990). All of this means that victims
  are often unaware that any offence has been
  committed at all. In addition, offences are
  generally private rather than public, leaving
  little visible evidence of their commission. This
  relative invisibility means that offences are
  peculiarly resistant to detection, and even when
  detected, are often not reported to public
  authorities.

6
Complexity

•  While many white-collar crimes can essentially
  be reduced to lying, cheating and stealing
  (Shapiro, 1990), many are extremely complex. The
  expertise which is being abused, which forms the
  basis of the offenders occupational position,
  may be scientific, technological, financial or
  legal. Many are also highly organized, involve
  many employees, and may have been going on for
  several years. Organizational offences may
  involve a complex web of falsification, cover
  ups, action and inaction. Many of the regulations
  and laws which are being flouted are themselves
  exceedingly complex, making it difficult to
  determine exactly what offences have been
  committed and who is responsible for them.

7
Diffusion of responsibility

• In many organizations functions are separated and
  responsibilities delegated. Consequently, it is
  often difficult to determine who is immediately
  responsible for any offence

8
The diffusion of victimisation

• Victimization is also diffused. Whereas in many
  conventional offences individual identifiable
  offenders harm individual identifiable victims,
  in many white-collar offences there is no single
  identifiable victim. The victim may be an
  abstract entity such as the government or the
  company, or there may be many victims who suffer
  only a minimal loss

9
Detection and prosecution

• White-collar crimes are particularly difficult to
  detect by victims, supervisors or law enforcers.
  Enforcers must possess the same scientific and
  technical knowledge as perpetrators and it may
  take many weeks, months or even years of careful
  investigation to unravel the more complex
  offences

10
Lenient sanctions

• Even when prosecuted, it is often argued that
  white-collar offenders are not dealt with
  severely. Few offenders are sent to prison and
  the vast majority are fined amounts which are
  often described as derisory

11
Ambiguous law

• The nature of offences creates many legal
  problems. Their complexity means that it is often
  difficult to capture the essence of offences in
  legislation and to specify precisely the
  situations in which an offence has been
  committed, leaving many loopholes to be
  exploited.