One of the main problems when discussing official statistics on crime is the fact that traditionally middle class crime is often unreported, unpunished (or treated leniently) or ignored. These kinds of ‘white collar’ crimes could be things like bank fraud, environmental offences, and health and safety violations when it comes to employees. These kinds of crime are often more damaging to society on a bigger scale and cause a lot more expense then ‘blue collar ‘crime. Despite this, corporate crime is largely ignored or treated softly by the authorities and public. Hughes and Langan (2001) attributed this to four main factors;
- Low visibility; corporate crime is shielded from the public gaze, it is privatized, in contrast to street crimes
- Complexity; they are often difficult to unravel as they involve many different institutions, it is hard to pinpoint blame
- Diffusion of responsibility; a single individual is rarely blamed, punishment is often widespread
- Diffusion of victimisation; many corporate crimes are described as victimless, as they do not appear to overtly negatively affect people like murder and robbery does
Because of these reasons a lot of white collar crime goes unpunished, which means that middle class perpetrators are often underrepresented in the criminal statistics. This also means that public attention is not diverted from the traditional working class street crime, which means that, due to the deviancy amplification spiral, public and police are more alert and vigilant to working class crime, which could also cause selective policing to working class crime because of its attention, even if it is not warranted.
From a Marxist perspective, the reason for the social differences in crime rates is because of the ‘unequal structure of society ‘(Item A). The capitalist society based upon private enterprise and individual gain creates frustration and aggression amongst those who are not suited to and are oppressed by this system, namely the working class. Marxists argue that the working class are never in a position to succeed in capitalist society and that crime is one of their only outlets and opportunities for success, because of the alienation from capitalist society, working class people, especially young males, lash out the system that victimizes them, through crime, and this in turn leads to high amount of working class males being represented in the criminal statistics. Marxists argue that the ruling class (bourgeoisie) commit all the corporate crime they want without punishment, but the overall less damaging crime of the proletariat is harshly punished.
From a left realist perspective, the cultural issues of relative deprivation and individualism have, according to Jock Young ‘ caused the working class area to implode upon itself’, the working class start off from a lower position than others, and commit crimes, mainly against each other because of their poor background.
Positivists and Interpretivists have two different outlooks on the official criminal statistics. Positivists believe that only directly observable ‘facts’ are acceptable as evidence in sociology, so positivists take the statistics, and the view that working class just do commit more crime than others, at face value. Interpretivists delve deeper and look at the possible reasons for the statistics to give the view that they do, things like selective enforcement, stereotyping and class bias from the police forces may unfairly affect the statistics, giving a warped view of the criminology of the working class. They would also argue at how the corporate crimes are not fairly or equally recorded in the statistics.
In conclusion, it is apparent and obvious that white collar and blue collar crimes are treated differently by the authorities. Blue collar crime is treated more harshly, with more money being spent to prevent it (with things like CCTV etc), a larger amount of arrests, convictions, and sentences for working class members, whereas white collar crime is often treated extremely leniently, because of its privatized and somewhat lesser known nature, it Is often only given warnings, short prison sentences, or fines. The reasons this are much argued and varied, but it is most likely a combination of cultural problems, deprivation of the working class forcing them to be aggressive to gain what comes easier to the middle class, unequal societal values, working class being alienated and starting from a lower position than the middle class, and the fact that the ruling class often do not seek to punish high status figures, and would rather stimulate moral panics about the seemingly less threatening ‘ middle class folk devils’.
