Criminalization Of White Collar Crime

White Collar Crime: The Victimization, Criminalization, and Police Action

Sean Mejias

Roberts Wesleyan College

White Collar Crime: The Victimization, Criminalization, and Police Action

White collar crime is a complex, diversified field and refers to a long list of offenses. The list contains offenses varying from embezzlements, corruption, frauds to employee theft. All of which are typically committed by a corporation or by an employee in general. Some forms of crime generate more fear than others. While crimes without direct victims are the less frightening to people, personal crimes generate more fear. Society seems to be less concerned about white collar crime as it does not have a knowable victim or an easily identifiable offender (Isenring, 372). The population often refers to white collar crime as certain scandals; one scandal in general which has made itself known to the public is that of Enron (Isenring, 373).

In 1997 a company known as Enron bought out a partner’s stake, selling that stake to a firm it created, by doing so Enron was enabled to hide its debt. Come 2001 a FORTUNE story labeled Enron a “largely impenetrable” company that piled on debt while keeping Wall Street in the dark (TIME). Later in the year the company reported a third-quarter loss of 618 million, and soon thereafter they admitted accounting errors, inflating income by 586 million since 1997. In the months to come Enron filed for bankruptcy. A similar company by the name of Andersen, and its CEO testified his firm had discovered “possible illegal acts” committed by Enron (TIME). Fear or concern about crime has become an important social phenomenon associated with issues such as unemployment, poverty, and delinquency (Isenring, 371...

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...porate power along with corporate crimes, and organized crimes, with consideration of white collar crimes, is in obvious ways, illegal and punishable by law. However, often law enforcement adheres to deterring the crime leaves to be seen.

When attempting to deter white collar crime by sentencing in jail as punishment courts defer to criminal sentences. These criminal sentences are within the statutory range established by the legislature for a particular offense. This deferral to the statutory range, which has been carried through most of United States history, reflected the fact-finding role played by the trial judge who made the sentence (Dionne). The traditional rule under common law is that an appellate court may not review a sentence that trial court imposed however, growing trends tend to be moving away from the strict application of the common law (Dionne).