Notes Toward a National Strategy to Deal With White-Collar Crime (From National Strategy for Containing White-Collar Crime, P 21-46, 1980, Herbert Edelhertz and Charles H Rogovin, ed. - See NCJ-72804)

• NCJ Number: 72805
• Author(s): M H Moore
• Date Published: 1980
• Length: 26 pages
• Sale Source: D C Heath and Co
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This contribution to a symposium on white-collar crime containment strategies categorizes the component phenomena of white-collar crime and proposes several principles of approach toward the development of a national strategy of containment.

Abstract

White collar crime continues to grow, facilitated by social conditions such as professional differentiation and specialization, increased wealth, and the growth of large institutions, while the criminal justice system remains primarily geared to fighting street crime. Prerequisite for an effective containment policy of white-collar crime is a broader definition of the offense. The power of institutions and individuals to victimize others and successfully resist criminal prosecution, should be emphasized to expand the narrow definition concerned with economic gains. Secondly, the problem should be subdivided so that the relative importance of its component phenomena can be assessed and approaches devised for dealing with each. For example, the first of seven identified components involves stealing through deception by individuals who then disappear. As in burglaries, an effective response to this form of white-collar crime will depend on individual self-defense and victim assistance in investigations. In contrast, the fifth component, credit card and insurance fraud, is best controlled by the credit and resources distributing companies themselves. Based on this analysis of white-collar crime forms, general containment strategies emerge in terms of substantive and symbolic objectives. The former aim for reduced victimization while the latter seek to reaffirm the basic fairness of the criminal justice system. In line with these two kinds of objectives, an appropriate division of labor should be coordinated between the criminal justice system and all other mechanisms of social control. Exploitation of a superior bargaining position should be recognized as a mechanism of white-collar crime equal to that of deception. Because of moral implications, special vigilance is needed to contain white-collar offenses in governmental and political institutions. Containment efforts should pursue abuses of institutional position, bribery, and institutional noncompliance with social obligations as emphatically as they combat crimes of fraud and embezzlement.