White collar crimes

1 Identify and discuss some of the principal elements of E. H. Sutherland's contribution to the study of White Collar Crime and some of the limitations regarding his work.
Sutherland defined white collar crime as “crimes committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation,” and broke them into two types based upon: 1) the offender’s social status and, 2) the occupation/mechanism “by which the offense is committed” (Rosoff, Pontell & Tillman, 2003, p. 3). Sutherland argued that white collar criminals were of a higher class than regular blue collar criminals: they were more sophisticated and their crimes were not shown on the six o’clock news routinely the way blue collar crimes like murder, rape and theft routinely were. In other words, white collar crime was not as visible to the ordinary people on the street because the ordinary person is not of the higher class to which the white collar criminal belongs. Still, the middle class man may be the victim of a white collar criminal, who could be running a Ponzi scheme like Bernie Madoff with people’s pension funds or 401(k)s, etc. (Schultz & Greenberg, 2009). White collar criminals tend to commit crime in finance—such as embezzlement—or corporate fraud, such as cooking the books like what they did at Enron (Eichenwald, 2005). Sutherland helped to show how white collar crime consists of these elements. His work was limited, however, by its classist approach—white collar crime, today, does not necessarily have the same classist parameters and can be committed by anyone who is trained, for instance, in computer hacking.
2 Identify some of the main issues involved in the challenges of defining White Collar Crime, and then discuss arguments for and against White Collar Crime over elite deviance.
Some of the main issues involved in the challenges of defining white collar crime are that there is no specific type of crime that can be counted as white collar; however, when crime is committed by a specific type of person (i.e., a person from a higher class) it is generally considered white collar. However, even crimes that such persons tend to commit (typically economical) can be committed by people outside the elite communities in which white collar criminals subsist. So defining white collar crime today is problematic both from the type of crime it refers to and the type of person it refers to. Arguments for white collar crime over elite deviance are that white collar criminals do not necessarily have to be elites in themselves or wield elite power. They can simply be engaged in crime that is not violent or related to street crime. Many white collar criminals are thieves—they are just not breaking and entering into physical property and prefer digital breaking and entering. The argument against white collar crime over elite deviance is that elite deviance better explains the kind of crime committed by those in systems of power—like Bernie Madoff or the original Charles Ponzi.
3 Identify the costs and consequences of White Collar Crime, and discuss why they are more difficult to measure that for conventional and other types of crime.
The costs and consequences of white collar crime are often hidden from public view and are not seen by the average person unless the average person is somehow impacted directly. For example, a corporate CEO like Jeff Skilling of Enron who lies and helps to cover up the accounting fraud of the CFO of the firm, will inevitably harm the working man, who has been given stock in the company. Many workers lost all their savings because they believed in the company and were fully invested in it. However, white collar crime is not always discerned in this way. Sometimes, taxpayers in general are the victims—like when Wall Street received bailouts in 2008 or when the Federal Reserve injects trillions of dollars of new money into the market, devaluing the working man’s dollars overnight. Conventional crimes are much easier to measure because the effect is seen and is felt immediate—a life is lost, a car is stolen, a home is burglarized. White collar crime often goes undetected, whereas conventional crime does not.
4 Discuss the traditional common claim that the general public perceives White Collar Crime to be less serious than conventional crime, then discuss which specific factors have contributed to a growth in the perception that White Collar Crime is relatively serious.
The traditional claim that the general public perceives white collar crime to be less serious than conventional crime is one that is coming to an end in my view. For one thing, everyone is more aware of it these days, particularly after Occupy Wall Street and films like The Big Short. People get what is going on behind the scenes and that is one reason they voted for Donald Trump—they believed him when he said he was going to go to DC and drain the swamp.
Another factor in that claim no longer being valid is that ordinary people are more and more being affected by white collar crime because everyone is living his life online: his data is online; his purchases are made online; his social media is all online. Life is lived on the computer screen, which is where a lot of white collar crime happens—so common people are more and more aware of what it means to be ripped off by someone posing as a professional. They understand that there are malevolent forces everywhere one turns—there are worms, and rootkits and malware online; there are hackers; there are bad investment managers; Ponzi scheme artists, corrupt CEOs; they get it and at the same time they accept just as they accept that the government is spying on their every action online. It is the price they pay to be part of the digital world.
References
Eichenwald, K. (2005). Conspiracy of Fools. NY: Random House.
Rosoff, S., Pontell, H. & Tillman, R. (2003). Looting America. NY: Prentice Hall.
Schultz, K. & Greenbert, D. (2009). Bernie Madoff’s Billionaire Victims. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/12/madoff-guilty-plea-business-wall-street-celebrity-victims.html