White Collar Crime in Contemporary

White Collar Crime in Contemporary Society

White collar crimes violate the fiduciary responsibility of the public trust being committed by individuals or organization. It affects businesses and societies by creating lack of trust that tends to diminish at all times. White Collar Crimes (WCCs) are of different types that includes, bank fraud, internet fraud, environment law violations, public corruption, government fraud and many more. These crimes have various effects on the corporate companies and the U.S. economy, however they are said to be non-violent. The term WCCs was coined in the 1930's by a professor known as Edwin Sutherland. According to Sutherland, a sociologist, he argued that WCCs is an illegal non-violent activity involving the traditional notions of manipulation and deception.

However, in the year 1981, other definitions of WCCs were developed by the U.S. Department of Justice which included "nonviolent crime for financial gain utilizing deception and committed by anyone who has special technical and professional knowledge of business and government, irrespective of the person's occupation." This paper analyzes the foundation, offending nature of the crimes and types of evidences in white collar crimes. The paper also summarizes differences between white collar crime and organized crime, as well as identifying how blurred the line between the two is.

There two major aspects of crime categorized as the offending crimes as well as the WCCs. The offending crimes involves a person otherwise known as offender, intentionally causing harm to another person, group of people or even self (overtly or covertly) through a means that is against the laws of the land of the laws of natural justice. The WCCs majorly involves subverting set safety measures and using the loopholes to have personal monetary gains without directly causing harm to another.

Most people believe they understand what is meant by the term crime, however very few people tend to practice it. In most cases, crimes normally vary by place, culture as well as era. For that reason, White collar crime and organized crime are two existing manifestations of the illegal activities which tend to share common features. I therefore agree with Donald Cressey a criminologist who speculates that, it will be so hard to differentiate between those two terms in the early 21st century.

There are various changes and developments which take place across the world we live in. These changes are brought up by nothing else but through actions of human beings. Cases of crimes have also become rampant, and they will continue to be more in the coming 21st century. Because of these, it is possibly true that, it will also be difficult to tell the differences between WCCs and organized crime because both have various connections within the legitimate realms, that involve business, government, as well as, law enforcements. The criminal acts within those legitimate realms continue to be more familiar and ongoing. When there are rampage on the WCCs and Organized crimes, the line existing between them and other groups they infiltrate in will definitely start blurring resulting to illegal corporations and to states that are rogue.

The other reason is that WCCs and organized crimes are both money motivated. This means that, the two crimes are committed for money, but it is usually true that, the crimes that are committed for money cannot be all as a result of WCCs and organized crime. However, crimes such as violence and infractions of laws usually occur due to monetary acquisition even though they could be they are not part of the organized crime. This still shows how it may be very hard to differentiate WCCs from organized crimes in 21st century (Baker, 2004).

The other issue making this difficult is the issue of both rip-offs seems to be working through connections. The connections involve the white collar criminals, and all the organized crime syndicates. In most cases, the street criminals happen to work alone, while organized crime usually requires participation of other people. The people involved in WCCs and organized crime will always continue with the issue of crime through collusion with justice system. All these connections take the form of bribery. By both WCCs and organized crimes working through connections also indicate how it will be hard to differentiate the two crimes in the 21st century (Baker, 2004).