Bringing White-Collar Crime Back In - An Examination of Crimes and Torts

• NCJ Number: 89495
• Journal: Social Problems Volume: 30 Issue: 5 Dated: (June 1983) Pages: 545-554
• Author(s): S Blum-West; T J Carter
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 10 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Earlier draft of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Washington, DC, November 1981.

Annotation

Criminologists have paid little attention to the study of civil law, a subject closely related to the conceptualization of white-collar crime.

Abstract

Because white-collar violations are generally treated as civil wrongs, it has been erroneously assumed that they are not criminal acts. However, often there is no difference between civil and criminal law in the way liability is determined, in the moral judgments made of violations, the purposes of sanctions, the objects they protect, and in the actual behaviors regulated by these two bodies of law. Crime and tort are no longer meaningful labels for classifying either the underlying behaviors or the type of legal actions or reactions to these behaviors. A solution to this dilemma is to separate the study of organization and causation of the behavior from a consideration of how the behavior is defined. Thus, two research domains would emerge. In one, the criminologists would have to supply their own behavioral definition of their subject matter, while in the other, the object would be to study the evolution and application of meanings to behavior. Footnotes and over 30 references are supplied. (Author abstract modified)