White-collar crimes have received numerous definitions in varying contexts causing strongly disputed issues among the society of professionals. Edwin Sutherland argued that white-collar crime describes an offense perpetrated by a respectable individual with recognized social status during their profession. FBI characterizes white-collar crimes by deception, concealment, or breaking trust, and they do not involve a threat of violence or physical assault. The most frequent incitement behind these offenses is financial principles – to avoid losing or obtain property, money, services, or to secure a business advantage. Since Edwin Sutherland, the definition still faces heated discourse among sociologists and psychologists arguing that this description is vague.
Richard Quinney and Marshal Clinard provide a remarkable iteration suggesting that white-collar crimes should be categorized into occupational and corporate crimes. The occupational crime involves an offense committed by an employee for personal achievement, while corporate crime involves employees for the organization's gain. Inappropriate accounting practices mainly cover the corporate crime. For instance, when an organization is charged with deflating losses and inflating assets implies that the intention was to promote the financial status of the corporate (Olejarz, 2021). However, occupational crimes involve embezzlements, like when an employee absconds an investor's money for personal achievement and goals. Moreover, Shapiro took a sociological standpoint and claimed that white-collar crime definitions share a primary problem. The theory observed that previous definitions confused actors with the acts and norm breakers with the norms. Shapiro further highlights that what describes white-collar offense is not the crime or status of the perpetrator but a breach of citizens' trust in government and economic organizations. Agents within these organizations exploit the policies within these corporations to steal and lie.
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The outlined definitions above influence problems associated with the definition and perception of white-collar crimes. Some of the factors influencing the definition of crime include public concern and perceptions about crimes. Though the public cares about crime, a significant number of these concerns might exceed or fall behind justifiable facts. Crime is a challenge among communities; however, public concern about crimes may exceed facts warrant. Media coverage of corporate crimes may partly influence the varying definitions provided by various scholars and postulates. When newspapers, online news, and television, among other media outlets, suddenly have numerous highlights about sensational crimes, the public may exceed expectations even without the crime happening (University of Minnesota, 2016). Similarly, mass media have escalated their crime reporting even when the violation is descending. Besides, news media distort the nature of violations in several ways, including overdramatization by reporting through various channels, dominating the crime coverage. Devotion to comprehensive coverage creates a misleading implication that the crime is escalating while it might be descending. Another problem that affects the definition of white-collar crimes includes measuring the occurrence of crimes. It is astonishingly challenging to perceive the occurrence of crimes to predict the crime pattern. When an offense occurs, only the victim, criminal, and occasionally witnesses know about the crime. Therefore, it is difficult to draw the magnitude of the crime with an incomplete picture.
The government provides accord proposals for further research that will effectively categorize and categorize white-collar crimes. The proposal requires investigation to concentrate on corporate crimes sanctioned and investigated by local and state governments. The immediate objective of the involved program is to develop a universal definition of corporate crime. Besides, the FBI has created partnerships with various organizations to capitalize on unique areas like pensions, securities, energy, commodities, and taxes. The agency has emphasized investigating accusations of corporate crimes by collaborating with CFTC, IRS, and DOI (FBI, 2016). The agency expects that variations of definitions will grow due to the evolution of fraud schemes and the uncertainty in the global economy. However, the Bureau has collaborated with various private and government entities to provide practical crime definitions.
References
FBI. (2016, May 3). What We Investigate . https://www.fbi.gov/investigate.
Olejarz, J. M. (2021, February 12). The Annoying Truth About White-Collar Crime . Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/11/understanding-white-collar-crime.
University of Minnesota. (2016, March 25). 8.1 The Problem of Crime . Social Problems. https://open.lib.umn.edu/socialproblems/chapter/8-1-the-problem-of-crime/.
