Trusted Criminals: White Collar Crime in Contemporary Society by David O. Friedrichs

Author:David O. Friedrichs [Friedrichs, David O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, True Crime, Social Science, Criminology, Law, Criminal Procedure, Political Ideologies, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, White Collar Crime
ISBN: 9780495600824
Publisher: Cengage Learning
Published: 2009-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

241

status deprivation

constitutive

perspective, 237

theory, 239

criminology, 242

postmodernist

feminist criminology,

criminology, 242

stigma, 236

crime coercive/

242

facilitative, 228

power theory, 225

structural

Freudian approach,

embeddedness, 230

crimes of capital, 240

radical/critical

223

criminology, 242

structural perspective

criminality, 220

general theory, 231

rational choice, 233

theory, 231

criminalization, 221

hyperreal, 242

rationalizations, 237

criminogenic

integrated theory, 244

tendencies, 228

D I S C U S S I O N Q U E S T I O N S

1. What are the principal objectives of a theory of

an answer to the question within these per-

white collar crime? Identify and discuss some of

spectives? Which individualistic attributes of

the main underlying assumptions for any such

white collar offenders do you regard as meriting

theory. What are the different answers to the

further systematic study, and why?

question of what we want to explain with re-

3. Identify and discuss the principal arguments on

gard to white collar crime?

both sides of the question of whether there is

2. Evaluate the notion that white collar offenders

such a thing as corporate or organizational

are intrinsically different from nonoffenders.

criminality. Which factors seem most impor-

What are the principal elements of the demonic,

tant in explaining the crimes of corporations or

biogenetic, psychological, and sociogenic per-

organizations? What can be said in favor of and

spectives on this question and the evidence for

against the idea of a general theory of crime,

E X P L A I N I N G W H I T E C O L L A R C R I M E T H E O R I E S A N D A C C O U N T S

249

especially as it applies to understanding white

most useful for understanding white collar

collar crime?

crime, and why?

4. Choose three of the following theoretical

5. Evaluate critically the contribution of the

perspectives on crime, or white collar crime:

conflict perspective, in its Marxist, radical, and

rational choice, social control, social learning,

contemporary critical forms, to the under-

interactionism (labeling), neutralization, and

standing of white collar crime. How can a

structural strain. What are the principal under-

focus on criminalization contribute to our

lying assumptions involved, and in what ways

understanding of white collar crime? What are

are these perspectives more useful to explaining

the value and the limitations of an integrated

white collar crime or conventional crime?

theoretical approach?

Which theoretical perspective do you find

9

✵

Law and the Social Control of

White Collar Crime

Dovariousformsofwhitecollarcrimedevelopandinspirelawsinresponse

to them, or do laws develop that designate certain forms of economic

activity as criminal? The conventional view is that law—formal social control—

develops in response to deviant or harmful activity. Some contemporary theoret-

ical perspectives (e.g., conflict theory and labeling theory) have suggested that

the opposite is true—that institutions of social control come to define certain

activity as deviant or criminal, sometimes quite arbitrarily (Blomberg and Hay

2007; Cohen 1985)—and there is considerable evidence to support this view.

The relationship between law and objectively harmful activities of the white col-

lar strata is complex. This chapter attempts to sort through some of the elements

involved in this relationship.

S O C I A L C O N T R O L A N D W H I T E C O L L A R C R I M E

Even though social control in the form of proscriptions against conventional

crimes such as murder, assault, and robbery has existed from at least the time of

earliest

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