White-collar and Corporate Crimes

Three theories will be examined to help explain white-collar and corporate wrong-doing: differential association (wherein veteran workers socialize their less well-seasoned colleagues), Marxist theory (wherein each person's well-being is in conflict with that of others), and deterrence theory (wherein corporate crime is a form rational misconduct that occurs because it pays).

Finally, the limits of current regulations and criminal prosecutions for white-collar and corporate crimes will be discussed. Although white-collar and corporate crime appear to be pervasive, they are still not the norm (in terms of population), largely because most workers are not in powerful, managerial positions from which to do substantial damage. Similarly, because most law abiding citizens are not engaged in street crime, violent criminals, too, constitute a minority. On this statistical basis, crimes may be classified as deviant, whether they are white-collar or street, and the healthy functioning of society is dependent upon this tenuous fact.

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. Increased business competition will no doubt increase the extent to which corporations will play hard ball. In other words, "Commercial enterprises and industries in competition with one another learn that illegal conduct is necessary to stay in business. In this fashion, Sutherland explains how business illegality proliferates" (Gomme, 1993, p. 418). Marxist conflict theory has also been used to explain white-collar crime and corporate wrong-doing. Both Marxist conflict theory and liberal conflict theory highlight the roles of social conflict and power in producing deviance and crime, but a Marxist perspective sees society as more narrowly composed of two, rather than a variety of, competing groups, "one of which owns or controls the economy while the other does not" (Gomme, 1993, p. 109). As Gomme (1993) asserts, "Marx did not have a great deal to say about crime . . . however, criminologists working within the Marxist paradigm have tried to explain criminality by using as a foundation Marx's ideas about the exploitative nature of capitalist economy and about the way in which capitalist society is organized" (p. 115). Marxist theory has sharpened the social scientific and criminological community's focus "on such importan
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Approximate Word count = 2018
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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