To be Convicted or Not to be Convicted

In 2008, the United States (US) suffered a financial crisis which was blamed on Wall Street, who were not convicted of their crime. This economic meltdown affected not just the US citizens, but the rest of the world. Within the aftermath, only two individuals, Michael J. of McGrath of U.S Mortgage Corp. and Lee B. Farcas, of Taylor, Bean & Whitetaker Morgage Corp., were sentenced to jail. Why are there only two convicted, when there were many other individuals involved that lead to the financial crisis? Was it because the financial innovations were not foolproof or risk-free? Or was it because the suspected criminals were high-profiled financial people? These questions raises issues of the definition of a crime and the sense of responsibility and justice, through the analysis of the classical perspective and the social positive standpoint. According to Peter Just, justice for a crime is not based on revenge because law is a ritual and integral to the function of society (Tremblay 2013). This paper will analyze the US financial crisis as a white-collar crime and how Wall Street has evaded a vast amount of criminal conviction. Structurally, it is divided into two sections: the debate over white-collar crimes and the issue of justice for the 2008 US financial crisis.

To begin with, the debate over white-collar crime is about how these types of crimes are either considered to be criminal offences or not. Crimes are defined as social offences against the person, property, or are intrinsically evil. White-collar crimes are assessed as “non-violent property offences involving some element of fraud or deception.”1 In David Shichor’s article “On Criminological Indifference to The Global Economic Meltdown,” he found that there was a lack...

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...n is very self-interested.

To conclude, white-collar crimes have been interpreted as a legal grey zone that enabled Wall Street to be not a criminalized issue, due to the generalization of its definition and the purpose of the law from the perspective of classical theorists. In the literature review, the authors reviewed and evaluated Sutherland’s definition of white-collar crime. It was the origin of its study, despite the lack of research historically. In contrast, others thought it was too vague and could not be legally implemented. There was a cross-examination of social positivism and classical theorists. The main position was classical theory and the notion of natural law that defined a crime as a violation of law. The purpose of the law is to protect and deter crime which enabled white-collar crimes to not get convicted, since it is not legally recognized.