The proposed study was designed as a replication of early research conducted by Wheeler, Weisburd and Bode (1982) which examined several predictor variables for their influence on the sentencing decisions of federal court judges for white collar offenses. This earlier work had shown that high SES offenders receive harsher sentences than lower SES offenders. Given that there are now new federal guidelines mandating prison terms for white collar offenders, a replication was proposed to determine whether sentencing disparity still existed.
Proposed methods involved collection of twenty-one predictor variables from seven federal district court's presentencing reports for defendants convicted of one of eight specific types of white collar crimes.
Zeidner (1994) reported that the new federal crime bill, approved in 1994, will breathe new life into federal law enforcement agencies even as it gives states more money for crime fighting programs. She states that the bill's funding comes from a unique source: savings achieved through personnel cuts at federal agencies. These savings are theoretically to be placed in a newly created trust fund from which state and local governments, as well as federal agencies, will draw annually. The federal government's largest role in carrying out the crime bill will be as a conduit between state and local governments and the trust fund, with some $28 billion in grants authorized over the next 6 years. However, the bill also sets aside $2.6 billion for federal agencies to spend on initiatives ranging from rural drug interdiction to much needed beefed-up investigation of white-collar crimes.
The focus on white-collar crimes and their punishment has increasingly been of concern to the federal government. One of the reasons for this is that in an era of intense concern with the problem of crime generally, white-collar crime has often been accorded less priority relative to conventional crime...