Essay On White Collar Crime

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White Collar CrimeWhat is white collar crime exactly? People in this country do not speak of whitecollar criminals as “criminals”, yet they have committed very serious crimes. Themajority of white collar criminals do not look like the stereotypical street criminal,and they do not bring about fear in those who see them. An affluent man, well inhis 50’s, is often carried out of his building in handcuffs after committing his whitecollar crime, but that type of criminal does not look scary, so we do not see them somuch as criminals. People see them as a reflection of us. Many white collaroffenders are ordinary people who get into financial difficulty and think they havefound an easy way to get themselves out of that financial crisis. Still, to the averageperson, that may seem like a small,…show more content…
This listing of typical whitecollar crimes could go on for several pages. However, it needs to be made clear thatall court cases relating to white collar crimes are actually criminal cases (Strader,2002). People may wonder why some of these crimes even get prosecuted sincethey are seen as “victimless” in many cases, but even though there is not one clearcut victim as there is in a single homicide, there are still victims who loseeverything they have ever worked for, and some who even get hurt or lose theirlives. So what is the cost of these types of crimes to society?The most expensive crime in financial terms is white collar crime (Conklin,1986). In January of 1977, the New York Times reported that the Joint EconomicCommittee of Congress estimated that one third of all financial costs of crime inthe United States could be contributed to white collar crime (Conklin, 1986). Now that it is twenty-three years later, it is probably safe to guess that their number hastripled. That is truly scary.

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