White Collar Criminality

This essay is going to discuss white collar criminality. It will explain what is understood under this term, give examples of these crimes and theories that aim to explain this phenomenon. It will first start of examples of this kind of crime and dividing it into two groups; occupational and organisational. It will then be followed by Sutherland's approach to the subject, who was the first person who attempted to define what white collar crime is. His challenge to psychological explanation of crime will be presented and general impact his study have had on the understanding of white collar criminality. Another theory presented in this essay will be general theory of crime developed by Gottfredson and Hirschi in 1990. After that there will be several points presented regarding general disagreement around white collar crime, among them the problem with defining this type of crime, its causes and problems in dealing with it.

Generally speaking white collar crime is a crime which is considered by criminologists more dangerous than other crimes, however it is usually not that much acknowledged by members of the society. It can be divided into occupational and organisational crime. The first one describes crimes committed by people during their employment in purpose of personal gain, and the other type describes corporate crimes committed for gain of the company and not necessarily individuals. Corporate crime refers for example to financial offences such as: illegal share dealing, mergers, takeovers, various forms of tax evasion, bribery and other forms of illegal accounting. It also refers to offences against consumers such as: illegal sales and marketing practises, the sale of unfit goods or the fraudulent safety testing of products. The are also crimes against employees and employment protection such as: sexual and racial discrimination or violations of wage laws. The last type of corporate offences are environmental crimes such as: illegal emissions to air, water or land, and hazardous waste dumping (Nelken, 2007).

It is very difficult to study white collar crime, because in many countries the information about white collar crimes is not included in the official statistics. Most of the literature on white collar crime is American, but a lot of finding on this subject have been made by English scholars.

The term white collar crime was defined by Edwin Sutherland as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation". Sutherland believed that criminal behaviour was learned from interpersonal interaction with others. He was the first who started analysing the problem of this kind of crime and suggested that white collar criminals poses different characteristics than normal street criminals. He focused on misrepresentation in financial statements of corporations, manipulation in the stock exchange, commercial bribery, bribery of public officials directly or indirectly in order to secure favourable contracts and legislation, misrepresentation in advertising salesmanship, embezzlement and misapplication of funds, short weight and measures and misreading of commodities, tax fraud, and misapplication of funds in receivership and bankruptcies. He noticed that in the time when he became interested in this subject, less than two percent of prison population belonged to the upper class of the society. He was interested in the relation between money, social status and the likelihood of going to jail for white collar crime compared to normal typical crimes. Since Sutherland made his observation about the number of prisoners who belong to the upper class, numbers of these criminals in prisons have increased, but even today it is still very visible that most people in jail belong to the poor part of the society. Despite the whole effort that Sutherland made to define white collar crime, the definition of this kind of crime is still broad and ambiguous. Most of his work concentrated on separating street crime such as for example murder, theft or vandalism from white collar crime. Reason for street crimes, called also blue collar crimes are psychological, associational and structural, while on the other hand white collar criminals are educated, intelligent and confident. They are opportunists who know how to take advantage of their circumstances in order to increase financial profits. They are qualified to get jobs where they can access a lot of money and gain people's trust. Most of them do not see themselves as criminals (Nelken, D. 2007). Sutherland was arguing that crime was present in every class of the society not only the lower one. He noticed that in 1930s psychological explanations of crime became more popular, people started to be interested in psychoanalysis, especially after publications of Sigmund Freud. Sutherland challenged psychoanalytic approach. In his unpublished paper from 1948 called “Crime and Corporations” he wrote: “ Business leaders are capable, emotionally balanced, and in no sense pathological. We have no reason to think that General Motors has an inferiority complex or that the Aluminium Company of America has a frustration-aggression complex or that U.S. Steel has an Oedipus complex, or that the Armour Company has a death wish or that Du Ponts desire to return to the womb. The assumption that an offender must have some pathological distortion of the intellect or the emotions seems to be absurd, and if it is absurd regarding the crimes of businessmen, it is equally absurd regarding the crimes of persons in the lower economic class” (Mannheim, 1965). There is not much evidence to say that businessmen are “emotionally balanced”, but psychological approaches cannot explain the problem of white collar crime, because this phenomenon is to widespread. As a challenge to medical explanations of crime Sutherland tried to develop general theory of crime. First he introduced his differential association theory which was based on social environment and values that individuals get from other people in their environment. He argued that deviance was a way of life that was passed from generation to generation. Sutherland's work included ecological and transmission theory, symbolic interactionism and culture conflict (Peelo, M. and Soothil, K. 2005). As mentioned in the beginning of this paragraph he believed that criminal behaviour was learned. This notion was part of his social learning theory that he developed in order to explain individual and social groups' criminal behaviour. Although psychology was becoming more interested in influence that the environment had on individual's behaviour Sutherland's theory did not influence psychologists who were interested in explanation of crime (Hollin, C. 2002).

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Another theory which is worth considering is the general theory of crime presented by Travis Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson in 1990 which focuses on self-control as an answer to criminality. First version of this theory was presented by Hirschi in 1969 where he argued that weak social bonds may lead to criminal behaviour. The second version of this theory was developed with Gottfredson in 1990 and focused more as mentioned above on self-control. Their theory focuses mainly on individual's self-control and combines elements of control and opportunity theory. From the opportunity theory the idea is taken that the occurrence of crime depends on environment conditions. The presence of attractive and unguarded targets increases the likeliness that the crime will occur. However as it is explained in control theory people can be distinguished to those ones who take advantage of criminal opportunity and those ones who do not. It all depends on their self control. People with low self control are more likely to commit crimes that those ones with high level of self control (Gottfredson, M., Hirschi, T., 1990). According to this theory the motivation to commit crime is greed, and desire to pursue pleasure, gratification or gain. This motivation according to Gottfredson and Hirschi comes from low self control. This theory became very popular in the 1990 mainly because it was simple to understand. Its main point that low self control is responsible for criminality can not be argued, however it can not be used to explain all criminal behaviour. There is not enough evidence that their theory can explain white collar crime. As Benson and Moore argue “ many individuals in white collar crime have demonstrated they can cope with delayed gratification- the opposite of low self control- by achieving an advanced education” (Benson and Moore 1992).

There is a lot of disagreement over white collar crime. First problem is the definition, the way the term 'white collar crime' is used in criminology shows that it is not clear what kind of crime it refers to. It may interesting to look at the way how judges define white collar crime. They distinguish this crime from an ordinary street crime by saying that this crime does not necessarily involve force against a person or property; directly relate to the possession, sale, or distribution of narcotics; directly relate to organized crime activities; directly relate to such national policies as immigration, civil rights, and national security; or directly involve “vice crimes” or the common theft of property. In 1981 the United States Department of Justice described white collar crime as: “non-violent crime for financial gain committed by means of deception by persons whose occupational status is entrepreneurial, professional or semi-professional and utilizing their special

occupational skills and opportunities; also, non-violent crime for financial gain utilizing deception and committed by anyone having special technical and professional knowledge of business and government, irrespective of the person’s occupation”. In this definition the defendant must be at least “semi professional” or have some “ special technical and professional knowledge”, however not all white crime criminals are professionals or people with special knowledge and skills (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics).

The second problem are the efforts made to explain causes of white collar crime. Many people try to use common criminological theories to explain this kind of crime, while others use this topic to put these theories in doubt. Another problem is the discussion about the commission of white collar crimes; some writers say that these crimes take place in more respectable settings than ordinary crimes and that it is a result of more ambiguous intentions than by other crimes. Also the regulation and handling of white collar crime is different than in the case of ordinary crimes. It is often controlled in a different way, and it causes a discussion on how much this reflects or even creates its ambiguity. The fact that the status of white collar crimes is uncertain may also reflect the process of social change where people are not ready for more criminalization of this kind of crime (Nelken, 2007). Modern criminology generally rejects a limitation of the term by reference to type of crime. The topic is now divided by the type of offence (for example property crime, economic crime or other types of corporate crimes such as environmental or health and safety), by the type of offender (for example by social class, status, profession or academic qualification), and by organisational culture.

As it can be seen from this essay the problem of white collar crime is widespread and complicated. There has not been enough space here to explain this problem more exact, and only main points and theories are mentioned in this essay. There a lot of issues which make it difficult to understand this phenomenon. Starting from the problem in defining the problem and ending on the issues of dealing with it. There are countries where this type of crime is not included in the official statistics what makes it difficult to see how big the problem actually is. The biggest issue of all is however the definition. If a problem can not be properly defined then it is very difficult or almost impossible to deal with it. The differences in approaching the subject also do not help it. Criminological and Psychological approaches are so different from each other trying to explain the same phenomenon. Those experts should probably sit together and develop one general definition of white collar crime and that would be a good start to deal with this problem.

Bibliography:

1. Nelken, D. (2007) “White- collar and corporate crime”, in M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R. Reiner (eds), Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 4th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2. Mannheim, H. (1965) Comparative Criminology. London: Routledge.

3. Hollin, C. R. (2002) “Criminological Psychology”, in M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R. Reiner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4. Peelo. M., Soothill, K. (eds) (2005) Questioning Crime and Criminology, Devon: Willan Publishing.

5. Gottfredson, M. R. and Hirschi, T. (1990) A General Theory of Crime, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

6. Benson, M. L., Moore, E. (1992) “Are white-collar and common offenders the same? An empirical the theoretical critique of a recently proposed general theory of crime”, Journal of Crime and Delinquency, 29:251-72.

7. Bureau of Justice Statistics, United States Department of Justice, Dictionary of Criminal

Justice Data Terminology 215 (2d ed. 1981)