White-collar and corporate crimes go largely unchallenged because little business wrongdoing is prohibited by criminal law. In an economic system based upon competition and free enterprise, those who unfairly gain advantage of others are often seen as shrewdly entrepreneurial, when, in fact, they are guilty of depriving others of goods, services, or money. In fact, the losses incurred through business crime far surpass those of street crime.
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.
Edwin Sutherland, an American criminologist writing in the 1940s, was the first to coin the term "white-collar crime," by designating "white-collar crimes as illegalities committed by respectable people acting within their occupational roles" (Gomme, 1993, p. 394). Gomme (1994) maintains that Sutherland's initial conceptualization of the white collar as indicative of high status is somewhat outmoded, because today, many jobs requiring a white shirt and tie are no...