, this despite considerable objective evidence of the massive economic and physical consequences of such crime.
Ettorre (1994) discussed new federal guidelines for white-collar offenses noting that the government has been getting tougher on both individual white collar crime and corporate white collar crime. As a result, Ettorre (1994) reports that new federal sentencing guidelines mandate much stricter punishments to both individuals and organizations. Moreover, at the corporate levels, financial settlements up to and exceeding $500, million can now be levied on those convicted.
The notion of harsher penalties for individual white collar crimes is related to the proposed study. In 1982, Wheeler, Weisburd and Bode conducted a study attempting to predict severity of sentencing by federal court judges for white collar crimes. A total of 21 predictor variables were explored for their predictive value with respect to: a) decision to imprison or not to imprison; and b) length of prison sentence given. According to the authors:
The chief finding with respect to social class is that the probability of imprisonment rises with the occupational status of the defendant. (p. 641)
In other words, white-collar criminals from higher socioeconomic strata actually receive harsher sentences than do white-collar offenders from lower societal strata. Similar findings were observed in more current research conducted by Hagan and Palloni (1986).
However, in the years since these two studies were conducted, the Justice Department issued new sentencing guidelines for white collar crimes, the purpose of which was to decrease disparity in federal sentencing by imposing mandatory prison terms for most white collar offenses. This fact leads to the question of whether severity of sentence disparity has, in fact, decreased since the federal guidelines were enacted?
The study proposed in this paper examines for an answer to the above qu...