Introduction to Criminology - White-Collar Crime

Question 1

What dose Croall, 2011 say about white collar crime?

Answer 1

• Takes place in private
• Offenders are usually quite legitimately present at the scene
• It tends to involve an abuse of trust inherent in the occupational role.
• Often involved some form of ‘insider’ knowledge
• Often no complaint made, when done normally made long after the event
• Generally involves no immediate physical threat, it is less a source of fear than other forms of crimes
• Determining responsibility can be extremely problematic
• It tends to have an ambiguous legal and criminal status.

Question 2

What are the 7 main types of White-Collar crime?

Answer 2

1. Theft at work
2. Fraud
3. Corruption
4. Employment offences
5. Consumer offences
6. Food Offences
7. Environment crime

Question 3

What is the difference between minor and major theft at work?

Answer 3

Minor - Small scale employees theft and fiddling.
Major - Large scale cases of embezzlement

Question 4

What are the most common types of fraud?

Answer 4

Benefit Fraud
Charity Fraud
Cheque Fraud
Consumer Fraud
Counterfeit Fraud
Counterfeit intellectual property and products
Data compromise Fraud
Embezzlement
Gaming Fraud
Insider dealing/market abuse
Insurance Fraud
Lending Fraud
Pension-type Fraud
Procurement Fraud
Tax Fraud
Carousel Fraud -VAT

Question 5

Who is Nick Leeson?

Answer 5

Caused the Barings Banks in 1995
Lost $1.3 billion of the banks money in risky derivatives and unauthorised derivatives trades.
Servered a 4 year prison sentence in a Singapore prison.

Question 6

What cases of fraud are there agianst the National Health Service? (Corall,2001:28)

Answer 6

General Practitioners - False claims in relation to staff, numbers of patients, night visits and vaccination. A GP claimed to have made $700,000 in 5 years from writing false prescriptions.

Opticians - False claims in relation to dispensing glasses, sight tests and tinted lenses.

Pharmacists - False claims for emergency opening, culloding in prescription frauds and collecting charges for drugs that cost less than the prescription charge.

Dentists - False claims for non-existent patients.

Question 7

What is the problem with employment offences?

Answer 7

A large number of people are injured or killed at work
Evidence suggests that there there is a disproportional support available to people in the lowest socio-economic group.

Question 8

What are some statistics on workplace injury?

Answer 8

• According to health and safety executives there has been over 1,600 deaths recorded from mesothelioma.
• In 2000, 186 deaths officially involved asbestos
• 2001/2 - HSE recorded 633 fatal occupational injuries and almost 130,000 injuries resulting in 3 days of work
• Health and safety commission estimated the cost of workplace injury and ill-health at £18 billion a year.

Question 9

What are Consumer Offences?

Answer 9

It covers activites which involve the violation of laws and regulations that relate to the production, distribution and sale of goods and services.

Building safety, compliance with health regulations, pricing irregularities, and failures to meet advertising standards.

A common consumer offence involved the sale of counterfeit goods.

Question 10

Why are there food laws and what are they?

Answer 10

Mad cow disease, Bird flu and E.coli focused most peoples attention on the fact that there is a range of laws, regulations and regulatory bodies.
The Food Standard Agency
The Office of Fair Trading
A number of governmental departments such as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - governing food production.

Question 11

What are some of the food regulations?

Answer 11

Control over how animals are kept, slaughtered and butchered to cleanliness of kitchens, restaurants, and shops.
Selling of food is also regulated by how it should be labelled, packaged and stored as well as what it should contain.

Question 12

What are the fruadulent activities to do with food?

Answer 12

Price fixing
False advertising
False or deceptive packaging

Question 13

What dose Corall 2007 say about food production?

Answer 13

Farming - range of offenses linked with GMF, misuse of pesticides, misappropriation or fraudulent claiming subsidies, and inhumane practices associated with factory farming.
Gang Masters - The case of 23 cockle pickers who died in Morecambe Bay in 2004 highlighted problems with the absence of control gang master and the apparent involvement of organised crime in the use of illegal immigrants. Convicted of 21 counts of manslaughter.
Fishing - Fishing in prohibited water or certain fish stocks, and the failure to declare catches are major problems.

Question 14

What does Corall 2007 say about food manufacture?

Answer 14

The illgeal fraudulent or misleading use of additives and other substances in the production of food.

Question 15

What dose Corall 2007 say about Food distribution?

Answer 15

Meat laundering - food that is not meant for human consumption is repackaged and sold on to hospitals, schools and supermarkets

Question 16

What dose Corall 2007 say about food preparation?

Answer 16

Deliberate aviodance of regulations around hygine and packaging. Breaches of regulations are common but prosecution are rare.

Question 17

What did Corall 2007 say about selling, marketing and packing?

Answer 17

Confusing or misleading labelling of foodstuff particulary in relation to disguising the amount of fat, sugar and water and so on in its products.

Question 18

What are some examples of environmental crime ?

Answer 18

Bhopal - 2&3 December 1984, a union carbide plant in Bhopal, India - Toxic Gas Leak, methyl isocyanate
The safety systems in the plant failed to operate and approx 30 tons of gas spread throughout the city.
Half a million people were exposed and some estimated that 25,000 people died. Double suffered as a result of exposure to the gas.

Waste Dumping - In 1998 Cambodia, a shipment of waste packed in plastic sheets were deposited outside a village some 15 miles from where it had arrived.

Pollution

Question 19

What is State-Corporate crime?

Answer 19

Serious social harms that result from the interaction of political and economic organisations.
Derived from work on events such as the explosion of the space shuttle challenger 1986 (wasn’t an accident)

Question 20

What is Differential Association?

Answer 20

The offender has been subjected to a greater number of normative influences that support offending than those that reject or resist it. Criminal behaviour is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of communication.
The learning of criminal behaviour it included the technique of committing a crime, which is sometimes complicated or sometimes simple and the specific direction of the motives, drives and rationalisation and attitudes. (Sutherland, 1947)

Question 21

Who are the theorists related to self control being the reason for crime?

Answer 21

Hirschi and Gottfredson
Human nature and the importance of gratification and the avoidance of pain

Question 22

How dose self control relate to white-collar crime?

Answer 22

The relative absence of such attachment would then help explain differential involvement in activities such as price-fixing, embezzlement, environmental pollution or health and safety violations.

Question 23

Who critises Hirschi and Gottfredson’s work? Why?

Answer 23

Seffensmeier (1989)
Says their two major claims that the demographic distribution of white-collar crimes and conventional crimes is very similar and that white-collar crime is relatively rare are demonstrably false. so their claim that it is possible to identify a single underlying cause of all criminality is also highly contestable.

Question 24

What are the techniques of Neutralisation related to corporate crime?

Answer 24

Identified by Skyes and Matza
1. Denial of responsibility
2. Denial of injury
3. Denial of the victim
4. Condemnation of the condemners
5. Appeal to higher loyalties

Question 25

What is Critical theory?

Answer 25

A theory from Marxism and other critical theories, including left realism. Unequal structure in society should be looked into for a explanation for crime.

Question 26

What is the problem with deregulated markets, stressed the importance of profit and success over ethical practices?

Answer 26

They have reduced the availability of secure employment and have increased levels of relative deprivation and undermined informal systems of social control.

Question 27

What do market society promote?

Answer 27

Violent crime by creating something akin to a perpetual sate of internal warfare in which the advancement of some is contingent on the fall of others and in which a corresponding ethos of unconcern.

Question 28

What are three main groups Punch (1996) identifies?

Answer 28

Structure - The structrual circumstances or conditions within which companies work
Cultural - The possible existence of corporate cultures that sponsor rule-breaking mentalities
Personality/Identity - Depersonalisation and ideology/rationalisation

Question 29

What did John Braithwaite (1991: 40) say?

Answer 29

‘Unlike many contemporary criminologist, I continue to be motivated by the goal that Edwin Sutherland set for us of developing criminological theory of maximum possible generality.