White Collar Crime - Research Paper Example

? White Collar Crime The essay aims to proffer pertinent issues that detail the foundations and enforcement of white collar crime. The paper would hereby contain definitions of white-collar crime, the laws that regulate them, and their impact on society. White Collar Crime Various studies have acknowledged and attributed the origin and foundation of white collar crime to Edwin H. Sutherland, a known criminologist and sociologist, who presented its theoretical relevance in his reported presidential address in 1939 at the American Sociological Society Meeting (Barnett, n.d., Strader, 2002). Both Barnett and Strader have cited the definition from Sutherland’s (1949) book, as he averred that white collar crime “may be defined approximately as a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” (Sutherland, 1949, p. 9). Due to the controversial nature that the definition has elicited from various criminology experts, it was deemed “outdated for students of the criminal law” (Strader, 2002, p. 1) and regarded as a misnomer. Thereby, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has presented their official definition as “. . . those illegal acts which are characterized by deceit, concealment, or violation of trust and which are not dependent upon the application or threat of physical force or violence. Individuals and organizations commit these acts to obtain money, property, or services; to avoid the payment or loss of money or services; or to secure personal or business advantage” (USDOJ, 1989, p. 3). There was another definition issued by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 1981, preceding the FBI definition as: [n]onviolent 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, nonviolent 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 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, United States Department of Justice, 1981). The foregoing definitions have qualified the elements that are needed to classify the criminal activity within the white collar category to include: nonviolent crime; committed for financial gain; by persons and organizations with occupational status belonging to the professional, semi-professional and entrepreneurial status; with illegal acts characterized by deceit, concealment, and violation of trust. The Legal Information Institute (2010) provided a simpler definition acknowledged from Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary as “a variety of nonviolent financial crimes, generally committed by businesspeople or public officials, involving commercial fraud, consumer fraud, swindles, insider trading on the stock market, embezzlement, bribery, or other dishonest schemes” (Legal Information Institute, 2010, par. 3). Accordingly, the offenses most commonly committed within the white collar crime definition are as follows: “antitrust violations, computer and internet fraud, credit card fraud, phone and telemarketing fraud, bankruptcy fraud, healthcare fraud, environmental law violations, insurance fraud, mail fraud, government fraud, tax evasion, financial fraud, securities fraud, insider trading, bribery, kickbacks, counterfeiting, public corruption, money laundering, embezzlement, economic espionage and trade secret theft” (Legal Information Institute, 2010, par. 1). Laws that Regulate White Collar Crimes As indicated in the Legal Information Institute cite, laws that regulate white collar crimes are governed by the “Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution (which) gives the federal government the authority to regulate white-collar crime, and a number of federal agencies (see sidebar), including the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Secret Service, U.S. Customs, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, participate in the enforcement of federal white-collar crime legislation. In addition, most states employ their own agencies to enforce white-collar crime laws at the state level” (Legal Information Institute, 2010, par. 2). However, as emphasized by Strader (2002), most cases of white collar crime are enforced at the state level and only in more complex and largest cases, would this type of criminal activity be forwarded to the federal level (p.5). Two specifically identified cases rationalize forwarding the cases to the federal level, to wit: “First, many such cases involve wide-ranging activities that spread across state lines and that are, therefore, appropriate for federal prosecution. Second, many of the cases involve highly complex criminal schemes the investigation and prosecution of which require resources that most state law enforcement agencies simply do not possess” (Strader, 2002, p. 5). As revealed by Strader (2002) aside from the criminal nature of the activities classified under the white collar crime category, there are instances that warrant the inclusion of civil and administrative proceedings, especially in cases where there are identified needs to “recoup money, to obtain injunctive relief, or to protect the public from further harm. The United States Attorneys’ Manual now sets forth methods for coordinating criminal, civil, and administrative proceedings” (Strader, 2002, p. 7). Also the general criminal law principles applicable to white collar crimes are hereby noted: “to gain a white collar conviction the government must prove (1) the required mental state, or mens rea, (2) the required physical component, or actus reus (generally either the defendant’s conduct, such as entering into a conspiracy, or a result of the defendant’s actions, such as causing damage to a federal computer), and (3) where the crime requires a result, that the defendant’s acts caused the result. Further, general principles of liability for the acts of others (“vicarious liability”) apply in white collar cases, as do principles relating to attempts and other “inchoate,” or incomplete, crimes” (Strader, 2002, pp. 8-9). Impact On Society One of the noted impacts of white collar crimes on society have been highlighted by Sutherland (1949) as the creation of distrust in society: “This financial loss from white-collar crime, great as it is, is less important than the damage to social relations. White-collar crimes violate trust and therefore create distrust; this lowers social morale and produces social disorganisation. Many of the white-collar crimes attack the fundamental principles of the American institutions. Ordinary crimes, on the other hand, produce little effect on social institutions or social organisation” (Sutherland, 1949, p. 13). Likewise, from the study conducted by (Spalek, 2001), the author indicated that “an experience of victimisation may cause an individual to distrust the financial regulators, since it is likely to reveal to her/him that the regulators generally offer investors inadequate protection and compensation. As a result, rather than blaming themselves for their plight, in some instances the victims of a financial crime may blame the regulators” (p. 8). Therefore, the perceived lack of protection and appropriate compensation for having been victimized of white collar crimes has caused an erosion of reliance, trust and confidence on state and federal regulators. Conclusion The essay has successfully achieved its defined aim of detailing the foundations and enforcement of white collar crime; encompassing different definitions, the laws that regulate them, and their impact on society. State and federal agencies have been monitoring reported incidents and perpetrators were prosecuted according to laws that regulate them. References Barnett, C. (n.d.). The Measurement of White-Collar Crime Using Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Data. Retrieved February 18, 2012, from U.S. Department of Justice: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/nibrs/nibrs_wcc.pdf Bureau of Justice Statistics, United States Department of Justice. (1981). Dictionary of Criminal Justice Data Terminology 215. Legal Information Institute. (2010, August 19). white Collar Crime. Retrieved February 18, 2012, from http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/White-collar_crime Spalek, B. (2001, October). White-Collar Crime Victims and the Issue of Trust. Retrieved February 19, 2012, from British Society of Criminology: http://www.britsoccrim.org/volume4/003.pdf Strader, J. (2002). Understanding White Collar Crime. Retrieved February 18, 2012, from Lexis Nexis: http://www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool/study/understanding/pdf/WhiteCollarCh1.pdf Sutherland, E. (1949). White Collar Crime. New York: Dryden Press. U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (1989). White Collar Crime: A Report to the Public. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. 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