White Collar and Corporate Crime: Flashcards
Sutherland:
defines white-collar crime as a crime committed by someone respectable and high status during the course of their occupation
3 types of crime:
Occupational crime is crime committed through the course of a job
Corporate crime is carried out by businesses often to increase profit and
State crime are criminal acts by nation states i.e. genocide
Facts
they’re hard to identify and investigate as individuals use their political power and money to escape arrest and conviction which explains the low levels of white-collar crime in the statistics
don’t appear in victim surveys as businesses may be unaware
and even if they are where they may not publicise it
Marx
Argues that the criminal law is a tool of the ruling class and therefore serves their own interests as they can manipulate the public perception of criminality
Box
Points out that the way society defines criminality focuses on working-class criminals I.e. shoplifting
Tombs
Looks at workplace death and found just over 1000 and concluded that unlawful workplace that outweigh the number of recorded homicides
Goldstraw-White:
Found that even those convicted of white collar crime didn’t view themselves as criminal argument but they didn’t do anything and no harm was done
Friedrich:
Argues that risk is an important factor and that businesses and corporations often carry out a cost benefit analysis of the white collar crime
Explanations For WC crime:
Sutherland and Cressey
Personality based approaches:
Some personalities inable criminality such as being ambitious and risk taking to get on top, this results in a lack of personal morality and crossing lines
Differential Association:
S&C
Exposure to deviance can cause deviance to become the cultural norm such as in the workplace and therefore is deemed as appropriate and is repeated
