¶ … White Collar and Corporate Crime Pose Special Problems for the Criminal Justice System? White collar and corporate crime present special challenges for the criminal justice system in several different and significant ways. First, they pose a challenge to the criminal justice system in detection, because they both differ from traditional criminal behavior. Second, they pose a challenge for prosecution, because it can be difficult to prove either type of criminal behavior and difficult to have fact-finders understand the theory behind the prosecutions. Third, they pose a challenge for the criminal justice system because the criminal justice system is not established to enable the type of restitution that would be the most appropriate solution for these types of crimes. Finally, they pose a challenge to the criminal justice system because the criminal justice system is set up to assess the severity of crime based on the danger to health, safety, and property, which is not always readily accessible when considering white collar criminals.

The first challenge that white collar and corporate crime presents to the criminal justice system is that they are resistant to traditional law enforcement investigation methods. Criminals are often identified by the fact that they are somewhere they are not supposed to be, doing things they are not supposed to be doing, or otherwise engaging in suspicious behavior that leads one to investigate their behavior. For white collar criminals, this does not apply. They are in locations where they are supposed to be. Moreover,...

Only by looking into the exact nature of their behavior can one uncover any type of wrongdoing, and this is, in and of itself, frequently very difficult to do because most of what they do is shrouded in an element of secrecy. For example, concern about theft keeps most information about people's finances private, but those concerns about privacy also make it difficult for people to detect malfeasance when it is occurring.
The second challenge to the criminal justice system when dealing with white collar crime is that it can be very difficult to prove in the context of a prosecution. White collar crime is not always clearly defined, and frequently involves underlying behavior that is legal, but carried out in a manner or with a motive that is improper. Establishing that behavior was motivated by something inappropriate can be difficult, if not impossible. In addition, white collar criminals, because of their access to accounts and records, can often do a tremendous job of hiding evidence, so that the exact nature of their crimes can be difficult to unwind and difficult to prove. It is not enough to be able to show that they were doing something inappropriate with someone's resources; prosecutors have to be able to prove what they were doing and why that particular behavior was criminal.

The third challenge that the criminal justice systems faces when dealing with white collar or corporate criminals is that the criminal justice…