White Collar Crime Theory

The emergence of white-collar crimes/theory during the turn of the century asked the primary question of who is causing the most amounts of crime and the most amount of damage within society? Edwin Sutherland did much of the research during the rise of his theory, differential association. In addition, Geis (2010) recounts that Sutherland “reviewed major instances of financial fraud by business magnates such as the railroad entrepreneurs and monopolists. He also catalogued legal actions taken by the criminal courts and the regulatory agencies against most of the prominent corporations in the United States” (p. 7). From the primary research, it was hypothesized that “white-collar crime is more likely than street offenses to tear at the heart …show more content…
With the amount of damage someone of power can do surpasses the damage of hundreds not in a powerful position. Therefore, the emergence of white-collar crime influenced many of the checks and balances corporations and those with authority have today in the United States. For example, the federal government began regulating company’s finances through the implementation of annual reports and the submitting documents and proof to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Warning labels on drugs and other services began taking shape as many business committed crimes by selling products they knew had long-term health effects. Many companies today must pass certain federal and state requirements before an item is sold or distributed. In addition, many companies today hire experts solely to combat white-collar crime and find flaws within their own system or employees that are embezzling or committing other high-class crimes. According to Lilly, Cullen, and Ball (2015), ways to combat white-collar crime is to implement education based on “management training in business ethics, opening lines of communication so that unacceptable risks or practices can be reported to upper-level executives, and the use of stricter accounting procedures to ensure that financial misconduct is no possible” (pp. 314-315). However, if the criminal justice system began implementing harsher sentencing to those committing white-collar crimes, the criminal justice system would then have to create new policy that coincided with matching the crime with time or monetary payouts. Although white-collar crimes happen every day and are covered up every day, many policies and practices have been instituted in order to combat wide scale crime across the powerful. Simply put, this theory is ever changing due to the job market and the emergence of new businesses