|
|
|
|
|
|
SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES
by
Part IV: White Collar Crime.
WCC is often conflated, in texts and in law, with corporate crime...yet the
sociology is very different as are the forms of crime involved.
Then too, WCC is one form of human behavior which resists easy theorizing and broad
generalizing. Efforts to generate formal, axiomatic, predictive theory fail here as much
or more than with other forms of crime. Yet there are some commonalities within the genre
which help sort out those differences and, thus, provide some leverage for those
interested in equitable reciprocities as well as in social policy oriented to low crime
relationships.
A. Definition.
White collar crime is that crime which involves a betrayal of trust implied in the holding of an office or other position of trust.
1. Street crime; burglary, robbery, theft, arson and other forcible forms
of economic gain do not involve existing relationships between persons requiring trust,
faith, hope and patience. Those victimized by street thugs do not suspend doubt nor are
they betrayed by trusting...other than the civil inattention required in public places
which Goffman discussed so well, social relation- ship and all the vulnerability such
imply does not exist in the forms of street crime mentioned in Part II.
Customers of organized crime suspend doubt and suspicion of exploitation and falsification
as they enter into contractual relationships with drug pushers, prostitutes, lenders or
other providers of forbidden goods and services discussed in Part III.
2. Doctors, lawyers, employees, public officials, teachers, brokers and buyers do
enjoy unsuspended trust. Patients, clients, employers, citizens and students have to trust
providers of services and goods else most formal organizations would collapse from the
want.
While the logic of a completely free market of goods and services warns the buyer to
beware, such advice ignores the armor of social honor and the fabric of social innocence
essential to social relationship.
3. Doctors, lawyers, middle and top management as well as brokers and public
officials on the take steal or convert to their own use, many times as much wealth as do
street thugs. And, as we shall see, corporate crime makes beggars of both.
B. Forms of white collar crime.
Again, simple and encompassing categories do not suffice to inventory the range of white collar crime. Every day, new defaults of trust and new violations of belief are invented with which to exploit the organic solidarity essential to a division of labor in a complex, high-tech society. But we can do an inventory of forms with which to sensitize the student and the public of American Criminology:
1. Health Care: Doctors take kick-backs on the prescriptions they write;
doctors prescribe questionable and expen- sive surgical routines, doctors refer patients
to a circle of friends not on the basis of merit but on the basis of mutual gain.
Physicians, psychologists, psychiatrists and hospital administrators over-bill both
patient and third-party carriers of health insurance. They bill for services not provided
and for patients not existing. They bill for invented clinical entities and they bill for
inflated regimes of therapy.
2. Law and the Court. Police sell out the trust implicit in their office by taking
bribes from organized crime. Police subvert the idea of law and order as they over-police
minorities and under-police the middle class.
Lawyers enter into pricing conspiracies to charge for services; they bill for hours not
given to a client; they convert funds belonging to a trust to their own use or invest such
funds for favors granted by the banking/investment firms with which they deal.
Judges seek sexual, economic or career advantage in dealing with the public and the trust
placed in the office they hold. Judges reproduce the structures of racist, gender and
class inequality in the kinds of evidence they hear, the kinds of motions they honor the
kinds of judgements they make and the kind of sentences they hand out.
In the CJS, the tort system, the military justice system, the private justice system as
well as the administrative regulatory system, class, status and power distort the quest
for criminal justice as for social justice.
Law-makers too violate the public trust. They take bribes from those with wealth; they
take gifts from those with high status; they permit corporations to write public policy on
auto insurance, rental law, pollution law and liability law.
3. Employees steal more from the stores and shops in which they hold position of
trust than do all the thieves, shop-lifters, boosters and false billing con schemes put
together. And the greater the position of trust, the greater the magnitude of the theft.
C. Motives for White Collar Crime.
The student will note that I used the term, motive, rather than cause. Causal analysis is useful in discussing the behavior of simple systems but not of complex, open systems...more about which in the last of the series.
And do note that the usual theories of crime are not very helpful to explanations of white collar crime...but see Part I. In brief, white collar criminals are not physiologically deformed, don't carry bad genes, don't socialize with known criminals, don't get a surplus of definitions favorable to crime, aren't in deviant peers groups, aren't poor and do go to church regularly. They live well ordered lives for the most part; are well respected at work and in community and are good parents and warm friends.
a. Life style. Much in the way of white collar crime can be attributed to
efforts of white collar criminals to attain and maintain a middle class life style.
Homes can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sending children to college requires tens
of thousands of dollars. Equipping a home with furnishings, art, electronics and other
appliances can be very costly. Middle class families buy and maintain two, three four or
more automobiles. Middle class families buy and maintain two or three domiciles. Middle
class families take vacations in Europe, Australia, South Pacific and Africa.
Transportation, lodging, food and amenities can run into tens of thousands of dollars.
b. Life crisis. Even middle class families face life crises; divorce is very
costly...especially to the women in the family. Legal services for other exigencies eat up
family reserves. Engineers, professors, doctors, and lawyers can find themselves
dis-employed as the economy shrinks or as the fiscal crisis of the state expands into the
middle classes.
c. Retirement Portfolios. Social security may pay a doctor, lawyer, professor or
engineer $800/month...$1000/month or even $1200 month. That would cover the cost of
transport, food, mortgage, or vacation but not all of these.
Around age 40-45, middle class professionals can see the future and see that it will
reduce their circum- stances to those of the lower middle class...so they begin to think
about how they might expand their investment portfolios. Doctors can always prescribe
hysterectomies or tonsillectomies; Lawyers can always overbill; professors can take on
consultancies and thus default on teaching. Administrators can form REITs to buy and sell
land they know their university their corporation, their state agency will soon acquire.
They can take bribes for letting contracts. They can divert public and corporate funds to
private companies.
Investment Schemes....doctors, lawyers, brokers and other not excluding professors get
involved in risky investment schemes...and sometime must come up with large sums in order
to cover/protect investment.
d. Existential Anger. As Weber put it, bureaucracies are iron cages into which
clients and staff alike are trapped. Once in that trap, an employee suffers all sorts of
humiliations. Arrogant bosses; blatant discrimination--usually upon behalf of favored
status person--usually white well educated males; unacknow- ledged work, unkind comment,
ill-kept temper, unfair evaluations. All these and more alienate the employee and, as with
those in the underclass, may produce pre-theoretical rebellion and resistance.
Embezzlement, fraud, theft and sale of company secrets all these and more provide some
small measure of revenge; some small satisfaction from the thousand slings and arrows
found in any bureaucracy from the state prison to the fortune 500.
e. Corporate Modeling. Many major corporations require their employees to lie,
cheat, steal and betray customers, competitors, inspectors and other employees. Sears
requires employees to bait and switch; Wards requires employees to sell worthless
insurance; Penney's buys from sweat shops in Indonesia Mexico, Thailand and Korea. From
such model behavior on the part of the company, employees learn.
If the company steals from customers; if the company violates pollution laws; if the
company converts pension plans to corporate purpose, the moral base is lost and, being
lost, renders the company fair game to the dis-enchanted, de-sanctified employee.
D. Solutions to White Collar Crime.
Policing, punishment, shame and other forms of degradation have but limited
reach and duration.
Regulatory agencies, civil torts, criminal liability, malpractice suits do not prevent
white collar crime...at best they give pause to the deed and craft to the act.
Education, social controls, religiousity, as well as other standard solutions alleged to
reduce street crime fail for white collar crime. We professionals/employees are already
well educated; we already live within a well-organized normative structure; we go to
church and condemn those who profane our gods and scandalize our religious values.
In a postmodern criminology, the solutions to white collar crime follow closely the
motives for white collar crime. The student can review those and undertake your informal
field assignment: generate social policy in both public and private sector which negates
the motives.
TRYoung