Video Transcript

· BRYAN K. PAYNE: White-collar crime first surfaced as a concept in 1939 when Edwin Sutherland, who was the president of the American Sociological Association at the time, described what he called crime committed during the course of employment by a respectable person. Now I paraphrased that definition. But is what he was focusing on was how people in what

· 00:44

BRYAN K. [continued]: we now call white-collar professions engage in criminal behavior while they’re at work. Now one of the most debated things in white-collar crime research is what is white-collar crime? So while Sutherland introduced that concept in 1939 in saying, white-collar crime is crime committed by a respectable person during the course of their occupation, there were many, many debates and there

· 01:12

BRYAN K. [continued]: continue to be debates about what is meant by the concept. There’s a few key ingredients. One is that the person is respectable. Now what is respectable? People have debated that. And what’s respectable to you may vary from what’s respectable to me. Most will know or agree that there are certain professions that everyone agrees on. But again, there’s debate there. But also people debate about when we talk about committed during the course of employment,

· 01:45

BRYAN K. [continued]: your strict white-collar crime researchers will say that it has to be done while someone is working. Whereas others will say that professionals who commit certain types of crime like tax fraud while it’s not during the course of their employment, that’s white-collar crime. It’s a debate that goes on. And one of the problems with the debate is that it makes it harder to connect the research that white-collar crime researchers are doing with the practices that white-collar crime

· 02:16

BRYAN K. [continued]: criminal justice professionals are engaging in if we’re following two different types of definitions. What I argue for is looking at white-collar crime as crime committed during the course of work. So we get rid of the respectable part. And we look at crime that’s committed during the course of work. And what that does is it addresses the fact that it doesn’t matter what we’re calling respectable. But it also recognizes that sometimes while individuals are engaging in the behavior, it’s

· 02:50

BRYAN K. [continued]: the corporation that should be held culpable for the offense and not necessarily a specific individual. Environmental crime would be an example. When a company pollutes the environment, it’s not necessarily a specific individual doing it, but it’s a crime. And it’s a white-collar crime. Now if we adhered strictly to Sutherland’s definition, crime committed by a person of respectability during the course of their employment, that wouldn’t necessarily fit there. So when we think about white-collar crime, I would suggest that if you identify any occupation,

· 03:24

BRYAN K. [continued]: you’re going to find that there’s white collar crime in those occupations. From working in retail to working in the health care system, the criminal justice system, the economic system, the cyber system, the religious system, the environmental system, the corporate system– all of these areas have different types of white-collar crime that are committed by professionals working in those systems. Now I would suggest that there’s a wide variety of offenses

· 03:52

BRYAN K. [continued]: within each of those. And the consequences vary within each of those. And having said that, most people in most occupations don’t commit crime. And that I think is an important caveat to bear in mind. When I talk about health care crime, for example, in my classes, I point out that most doctors don’t commit these crimes. Most pharmacists don’t do it. The few that commit the crimes though, it creates significant problems for the rest of us.

Question:

This video transcript above will review white collar crime.

List the key components of the rational choice theory within application of white collar crime.

350-450 words excluding references, APA format and a minimum of 3 references