Commonly known as corporate crime, white collar crime is a crime that is financially motivated and is mostly committed by government and business professionals. Unlike most of the other common crimes which are carried out by the use of crude weapons, white collar crime is non-violent and is committed by people who are highly respectable and have high social status in their places of occupation. Fraud, insider trading, fund embezzlement, cybercrime, identity theft and money laundering are some of the many forms of white collar crime. Throughout the world, a high percentage of the people who commit white collar crimes are fully employed middle aged people who start committing such corporate crimes at the time when they are in their late thirties and carry on with the vice up to when they are in their mid-forties. Most of the offenders are of middle class status in life and have attained a commendable level of education with most of them being in happy marriages (the rest of them are usually dating with the aim to get married) and have relatively strong ties to their extended families, the society and the religious organizations that they support (Pacławski, 2016) . These reasons make it really difficult for any of them to be suspected of any illegal activities because of their strong background in the society and other social organizations.
Any individual has their own degree of tolerance towards ethical behaviour. On top of that, individuals also have a limit on the amount of self-control they possess when subjected to temptations. As such, the environment in which a certain individual is working on has an almost direct influence on the level of control that he or she possesses over their conscience. For instance, a person in a work environment in which a high percentage of the other employees are involving themselves in white collar crime is bound to be more tempted to do the same unlike a person in a situation where no one else is committing the vice (Dobovšek, & Slak 2015). Some of the people who get involved in white collar crimes are those whose places of work have poorly designed incentives. For such people, it is relatively easy to involve themselves in white collar crimes and such people end up getting away with the crime since there are no well set rules to curb such behaviours. I order to stop this vice, the various companies with the ability to employ more people as their employees need to come up with incentive plans that discourage white collar crimes.
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People in working organizations whose management supports nonchalance towards ethics are another group of people who end up involving themselves in white collar crimes. For instance, a high percentage of investment firms over the world use various networks in order to make the use of inside information for stock and forex trading legit (Healy & Serafeim, 2016) . Any time that such activities take place in a company, there is a high probability that analysts in such companies are going to breach the laws that are set down by the organization for their own personal gain. On the same note, the people who perceive white collar crimes as harmless activities are bound to commit such vices and also encourage anyone who is around them to do the same. For instance, a high number of traders who are involved in insider trading consider it as a harmless activity and thus are willing to continue carrying it out for as long as they possibly can (Goel & Singh, 2018) . The main reason for this is normally the fact that the insider traders do not come into contact with whoever is being cheated and can thus continue carrying out the same practice for long. On the other hand, salespersons who bribe their clients think that they are doing the right thing because in their own thinking, the only thing that they are doing is “putting the deal together” and as a result are not harming anyone.
One of the most popular perpetrators of white collar crimes are the people who falsely believe that everyone misbehaves and thus the law should be disregarded to some extent. Many executive officers do not agree at all with the existing security, the doping prohibition rules in sports and also the federal bribery laws in the United States of America (Kostelnik, 2012) . The reason for this is because such people claim that if the victim of such a crime is not found, the law must be deemed to be “Stupid”. However, the failure to respect the law does not prevent such people from facing the wrath of the law if they are ever found out.
Despite the fact that white collar crime is documented as an offence and dire consequences put up for any person who is found to be committing those crimes, most of the offenders go unnoticed and as a result they end up unpunished too. Although the crimes are not as dramatic as violent ones and as a result have no victims, they have a much larger financial impact and thus the need to bring that vice to an end (Gottschalk & Glasø, 2013) . However, the way in which the perpetrators of the crime go unpunished poses the question on what the reason for that is. When investigations were made on the reasons for the Great Recession, the Federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the body that had been tasked with the responsibility to investigate the matter, came up with the conclusion that even though financial regulation failures and breakdowns that had been experienced in corporate governance were some of the reasons why the recession was experienced, systematic breaches in both ethics and accountability (at all levels) were the main reasons (Larsson, 2013). Despite that conclusion, most of the financial executives who had been criticized for the meltdown were never prosecuted and the few who were prosecuted were not convicted.
In the late 1980s, one of the most feared people who involved himself in white collar crime, Michael Milken, also known as “Junk Bond King,” amassed over $1 billion illegally but only served in a federal prison for less than two years whereby a robber who owns a gun and holds up a financial institution will only amass not more than $5,000 but will end up spending not less than 5 years in prison (Alalehto & Larsson, 2009) . One of the reasons that makes it possible for most white collar crime offenders to go away with the offence unpunished is the fact that a lot of resources are required to do the necessary investigation and come up with the right amount of evidence to make it possible to prosecute and convict a criminal. This leads to very much difficulty in coming up with a case and being able to prove that a suspect is guilty and should thus be arrested. This fact alone leads to many more people being enticed into joining the category of white collar criminals knowing very well that the probability of being arrested or even noticed is very low.
The fact that most white collar crime is carried out by the employees of the company in which the crime is committed and makes it to go undetected because there is a very low probability that insiders in the organization will be suspected of doing such and even if the employer suspects that such an offence happened, the resources needed to carry out the investigation are too high that the whole case will end up not being investigated (McFayden, 2010) . Another reason why elite and white collar criminals go undetected is because people in middle class jobs tend to have more opportunities to commit crime against their employers due to the fact that white collar crime is not as much monitored as street crime and other forms of crime are (Gangwar, 2013) . On top of that, most employers do not involve police officers or other members of the intelligence service to help them determine whether or not any case of white collar crime has taken place at their place of work and this makes it very easy for employees to carry out criminal activities and get away unnoticed.
The fact that one of the greatest challenges that businesses face is white collar crime brings about the need to ensure that whereas the business owners put some trust on their employees running the businesses, they come up with some measures that will help curb the vice. The government also needs to come up with ways through which it can successfully ensure that public properties are not misused by the people who are given the mandate to run them on behalf of it (Chiari, Portolese & Ruzzeddu, 2018) . The first step towards ensuring that any company is able to successfully curb white collar crime is the implementation of systems of verification. This will ensure that no single employee has the power to handle all the contracts that the business is undertaking or even carry out the highly sensitive financial transactions and will help in reducing the level of white collar crime in the business since even if a fishy transaction is undertaken by one of the employees, thoroughly verification of that transaction will help in catching the culprit.
The fact that most of the activities that involve white collar crimes are carried out by the use of the internet is enough reason to have all internet activities that are carried out by employees tracked down in order to determine whether or not a white collar crime is being carried out (Erfa, 2018) . Such an activity can be carried out through the use of update software that will help in the close monitoring of social media connections, the websites that the employees visit constantly and any other activities that are conducted by the employees. On top of that, a business may find it important to install a software on the employees’ personal devices to help determine the kind of information that they share through the internet (Enobi 2015) . On top of monitoring the internet activities that are undertaken by the employees of a company, an organization should also consider working hand in hand with an attorney who has specialized in white collar crime. Such an attorney would be important in ensuring that the management is advised in the right manner should there be suspicions that the employees are involving themselves in wrong and suspicious activities. The attorney would also be of great help in helping the owner on the right way through which he or she can press charges against any suspected offenders.
Monitoring employees through the use of the right means e.g. video cameras will be an effective way of determining whether any illegal activity is going on or not. On top of that, the business should let the employees understand that they are being monitored in order to make them less interested in involving themselves in any white collar crime. The areas of that are most tempestuous should be given the first priority when the monitoring begins. Holding regulators available is also another effective way that can be of much help in preventing white collar crime. This can be made effective by coming up with laws that aim at arresting, prosecuting and convicting any regulators who are found to be committing offences. Glamorizing white collar crimes is another thing that should be stopped if at all the fight on this kind of crime is to be won (Wright, 2012) . More interviews are conducted on suspects and this makes the case more prominent and as a result the decisions made are more influenced by the public. Should this stop, people will be afraid of involving themselves in white collar crimes since judgement will be more severe.
Basically, white collar crime is carried out mostly by people who are either employed by the government or other private institutions. This kind of crime is rarely noticed because it does not involve any violence but is financially motivated just like most of the other common crimes. The crime is normally committed by middle aged people who are of a high social status in the community and also maintain a good relationship with the other members of the families which they come from. The fact that the cost of investigating white collar crimes is relatively high makes it possible for most people to get away with the crime undetected.
References
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