White Collar Crimes Essay Example

The chapter under consideration is devoted the problem of white collar crimes, their history and the present-day state of affairs. The issue of white collar crimes is a complicated one because there is certain confusion what kind of offences can be referred to these crimes. Besides, due to the poor coverage of the problem for the public, white collar crimes are thought to be infrequent and, therefore not so important as the conventional crimes which are often associated with violence and direct offence. Moreover, many people sincerely believe that imprisonments for white collar crimes are unnecessary and even unwarranted.
Generally, crimes that can be referred to white collar ones vary a lot, which is a primary reason that there is no distinct definition of the term. They can be committed by large organizations or by isolated individuals. They can concern a theft of a huge sum or comparatively modest one. They can pose a threat to numerous lives or just cause some relatively serious harm to people’s health. Besides, in most cases white collar crimes are not as obvious as conventional ones. They occur in offices, but not in streets like most usual crimes do. There are often no immediate witnesses and sometimes even no explicit victims whereas conventional crimes are often observed, even by the police, and their victims immediately understand they have become objects of an abuse. Due to all these peculiarities, for years there have been numerous and ardent discussions among specialists what can be referred to as a white collar crime.
Though the history of white collar crimes goes back to ancient times, the term itself was first introduced only in 1939 by Edwin H. Sutherland in his presidential address to the American Sociological Society. His speech attracted public attention to the issue and sparked numerous discussions on the subject. Sutherland believed that white collar crimes occurred and were rarely considered illegal not because some people in power violated the law, but because the law was bad. So, in his address and in his consecutive works he called for having a closer look at the existing laws and changing them accordingly with consideration of white collar crimes existence.
With an increase in interest for white collar crimes, new and new terms started to appear in order to define the phenomenon. They were economic crime, respectable crime, business crime, commercial crime, consumer crime, political crime, governmental crime, etc. There were slight differences between them in connotations, but generally these terms meant the same. After all, certain characteristics of white collar crimes have been established and they are as follows: white collar crimes are observed in certain occupational context; their motives are financial gain or career benefits; and they do not involve direct purposeful violence. It must also be noted that white collar crimes are not necessarily committed by those who have high status or power. The white collar criminals can be the ones who want to get some career promotion or seek a single financial gain.
The period known for its active social movements against white collar crimes was the 1970s. That was the time when the American society had got tired of complicated political games of their leaders which only made the lives of ordinary Americans harder. That was the period after the Vietnam war and Nixon’s Watergate scandal when Americans had lost trust in their leaders and started to see them in a more realistic way. The movements against white collar crimes only grew in their intensity in the 1980s and 1990s. The fact that many politicians wanted to use this anti-white-collar-crime policy as bait in their electoral program or against their opponents only helped to popularize the issue and make it more covered in press and on television. However, when the war on terror was announced, the public attention was distracted from white collar crimes and movements against them became rarer.
The role of mass media in increasing the public awareness of white collar crimes is very contradictory. On the one hand, they do inform the wide audience that such crimes take place. They expose illegal intentions of those politicians, officials, or businessmen who abuse the power and influence which they have. But on the other hand, mass media’s coverage of the issue is too one-sided and inconsistent. They focus on scandalous aspects of the problem and, in doing so, they are not often unbiased. They are not always objective and in most cases make a stress on the activity of certain individuals whose illegal actions they want to expose. In doing so, however, they characterize the harm rather than the criminals’ liability, which is not always the full picture of the case.
Considering the fact that white collar crimes are not as obvious as conventional crimes, the effective means of exposing them are of the utmost importance. Among such means there are informers and whistleblowers. Their function is generally the same, i.e. to give necessary information which can help to investigate a crime and find those who are guilty. The difference is in the relation these two groups of individuals have to the crime itself. Informers are the individuals who have information about a certain crime for the reason that they have something to do with the crime themselves and by exposing the facts about the crime they try to avoid punishment themselves. The other reason is that they share facts in order to get some financial remuneration, which is also not very ethical. Whistleblowers, though, are those who expose criminals because they do seek justice. They do not expect any financial reward for their assistance. Of course, sometimes whistleblowers are the ones who want to get rid of chiefs whom they dislike or whose illegal behavior they cannot stand. In such cases, whistleblowers do get a kind of reward; but these cases are rare. More often whistleblowers end up with losing their jobs or even going insane because of constant fear for their safety. So, more common are the cases when potential whistleblowers just keep silence and do not offer their assistance at all.
So, considering everything mentioned above it should be noted that the issue of white collar crimes is a very complicated one and, therefore, requires special study with particular attention to the nuances which cause certain civil actions and economic deals to be viewed as illegal.