Provide a list of countries or regions of the world and name examples of state crimes that have been committed in them. Discuss what the world’s reaction during and after the crime, whether the attitude or construction of the crime’s meaning changed after it had been committed, who (if anyone) was held accountable, and in what ways. (Hint:  you may want to use a world map so you can see where the countries are located.)  

it.  

Requirements:

·  Written essay; 2– 3 pages in length (not counting cover or reference source page); 12 Times New Roman font; double spaced with 1” margins on all sides.

·  APA formatted pages and applicable reference citations

WHITE COLLAR CRIME IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY 4TH ED.

CHAPTER 4
OCCUPATIONAL CRIME AND AVOCATIONAL CRIME
Trusted Criminals
Designed by: Jordan Land, M.S.

Retail Crime and Service Fraud
Retail businesses are often thought of as victims of crime, whether by pilfering or embezzling employees, shoplifters, or robbers and burglars

Retail stores engage in a wide range of deceptive and illegal activities
Fraudulent advertising
Illegal pricing practices
Sale of fraudulently represented merchandise
Purchase and resale of stolen goods

Retail Crime
Paul Blumberg has documented illegal and unethical practices by businesses

He identified other deceptive practices in retail crime
Adulteration of products
Short weighing
Bait-and-switch
Bar-code prices
Collection of taxes on nontaxable items
Wage theft

Defrauding Vulnerable People
In a study conducted by David Caplowitz, he found that the poor were:
Being overcharged
Sold inferior goods
Victimized by deceptive credit practices, complicated consumer contracts, and lawsuits threatening wage garnishment

Despite new laws and consumer affairs initiatives, these fraudulent practices are hardly extinct

Service Business Fraud
Repair service businesses have a notorious reputation for cheating customers

Complaints about auto repairs constitute the largest percentage of consumer complaints according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

These frauds include:
Highway bandits
Estimate scams
Maintenance hook schemes
Part replacement problems

Service Business Fraud

Many consumers are unaware that they have been victimized

When they suspect that they have been victimized, they are skeptical to report the crime because they do not believe that it will lead to effective action

All consumers will be “robbed” by unscrupulous retailers and entrepreneurs

Medical, Legal, Academic & Religious Crime
Profession refers to occupations characterized by higher education and training; specialized technical knowledge and skills, and a high degree of autonomy

Semi-professional has been applied to some occupational groups such as pharmacists and nurses

Some who claim professional status but lack real autonomy
Lawyers, physicians, scientists
These individuals work for large corporations

Medical Crime
Physicians are well compensated, are typically accorded a high level of trust, and exercise unusual power or professional dominance over patients
Among the specifically illegal and unethical activities committed by physicians:
Fee splitting
Taking or offering kickbacks
Price fixing
Unnecessary operations
False and fraudulent billing

Medical Crime as a Violent Crime
The performance of unnecessary surgery is the single most disturbing of medical crimes

The most common forms of unnecessary surgery are:
Removal of tonsils, hemorrhoids, appendixes and uteruses
Heart-related surgery
Caesarean section deliveries
Performing unnecessary surgeries can cause paralysis, blindness or other forms of permanent injury

Medical Crime as Fraud
Medicaid and Medicare fraud by physicians have been characterized as an especially “pure” form of white collar crime because it occurs within the context of routine occupational activity
Overutilization is perhaps the most common form of medical fraud, and it is especially difficult to prove and prosecute successfully
Specific techniques used in this fraud are:
Ping-ponging, family ganging, steering, upgrading, code games and unbundling

Legal Crime

Legal crime refers to lawyers engaging in criminal conduct in the course of discharging their professional duties

It is more common for lawyers to become involved with, facilitate, or help cover up illegal enterprises while maintaining primary commitment to the conventional and legitimate tasks of a lawyer

Legal Crime as Fraud

The intangibility of a lawyer’s work provides special opportunities for overbilling clients

It is often proven difficult to establish criminal intent in such cases of alleged fraudulent conduct

Legal Crime as Collusion
The ethics code of the American Bar Association requires lawyers to keep in strict confidence any knowledge of a client’s past crimes and prohibits lawyers from advising or assisting a client in the commission of any illegal or fraudulent act

A number of major insider trading cases in the 1980s involved criminal charges against lawyers who passed on privileged information about pending corporate takeovers

Academic Crime:
Professors, Scientists and Students
The fact that professors engage in less occupationally related crime than do doctors and lawyers is probably more a function of fewer opportunities for such activity than a matter of greater personal integrity among professors
Academic crimes refer to plagiarism, embezzlement of university discretionary funds, forgery, claims about credentials, etc.
Plagiarism refers to use or misappropriation of ideas or words of others without giving them credit

Academic Crime:
Professors, Scientists and Students
Outright embezzlement is hardly unknown in the academic environment

Administrators and employees often have better opportunities than professors to embezzle or obtain improper payments

Some academic researchers have taken advantage of the special access they have to rare and valuable artifacts and manuscripts to steal these items and sell them for profit

Academic Crime as Fraud
It has proven difficult to develop reliable data on the extent of scientific fraud, which principally takes the form of fabricating, manipulating, and suppressing data

Claims that outright scientific fraud is rare are commonly made, but whether or not they are accurate have not typically been based upon scientific research

Student White Collar Crime
Students commit various illegal acts that have nothing to do with white collar crime, including vandalism, drunkenness, illicit drug use, car theft, etc.

Student white collar crime is best defined as illegal or harmful conduct committed specifically in the context of their student role
For gain or advantage
The clearest form is cheating

Student White Collar Crime
Colleges are also concerned that many applicants engage in “résumé fraud” by making false claims about their achievements and activities

New technology has greatly increased the opportunity for cheating

Academic cheating takes many forms:
Cheating on exams, home work and term papers

Religious Crime
Religious crime may be the most disturbing of all forms of crimes by professionals

Religious leaders may generate a bottomless well of trust among gullible believers

Some religious leaders have defrauded believers and used offerings or donations for corrupt purposes

Employee Crime
Employees stealing from their employers is one of the more common images of white collar crime
When managers steal, losses average $250,000
Executives and managers are often in a position to award themselves huge bonuses and a wide range of expensive “perks”
Clark and Hollinger define employee theft as:
The unauthorized taking, control or transfer of money and/or property of the formal work organization perpetrated by an employee during the course of occupational activity which is related to the employment

Employee Crime
A great deal of employee crime is not readily discovered

Even when discovered it may not be reported to any official agency

No agency collects and publishes statistics on the range of activities encompassed
Only rough estimates based on diverse sources and statistical extrapolations are available for study

Forms of Employee Theft
Withholding effort at work can be viewed as a form of employee crime
Employees use office supplies and machinery for personal use, make personal phone calls on a business phone, etc.
Employee theft occurs on a number of different levels:
Pilfering refers to petty theft
Chiseling refers to cheating or swindling
Fraud is theft through misrepresentation
Embezzlement refers to the destruction or fraudulent appropriation of another’s money which has been entrusted to one’s care

Employers’ Response to Employee Theft

Some employee theft is tolerated, sometimes even encouraged, by employers to compensate for low wages and poor working conditions

Workers who engage in it are less well positioned to organize and make demands

Employers’ Response to Employee Theft

Many employers are unlikely to involve police when they discover significant employee thefts because:
To do so risks relationships and productive patterns at work
Exposes improper or even illegal practices of the employer
Possibility of garnering bad publicity if arrests and criminal trials ensue

Alternative Forms of Employee Crime
Theft of ideas, designs and formulas are another form of employee crime
Such theft can be expected to become an increasingly costly problem in the current “information revolution”
Not all employee crime against the employer takes the form of theft
Employees may commit sabotage
To conceal their own errors, to gain time off or for more pay, or to express their contempt and anger with their work and employer

Some Factors in Employee Theft
An extensive study of employee theft found that employees who commit theft are more likely to be young males, and unmarried
Company property refers mainly to basic, bulky components and tools
Property of uncertain ownership refers to small inexpensive items like nails, bolts, drill bits, etc.
Personal property refers to monogrammed clothing, wallets, jewelry, personal modified tools, etc.

Conditions in the Workplace
and Employee Crime
During the period of 1750-1850, opportunities for employee theft became far more widely available

In the more recent era, technology has facilitated new forms of employee crime

The most important factors influencing employee theft involve:
Workplace conditions such as the size of the organization

Conditions in the Workplace
and Employee Crime

Smigel (1970)found that respondents were more prepared to steal from large organizations than small ones
An employee stealing from a large organization is far less likely to suffer measurable harm from conventional levels of theft
The larger the organization, the smaller the risk of being caught

Conditions in the Workplace
and Employee Crime
Other studies have found that employees’ dissatisfaction with the company or with supervisors was associated with higher rates of employee theft

Opportunity to steal is a major determinant of employee theft

Those who have the greater access to things worth stealing are the most likely to do so

Avocational Crime and White Collar Crime
Avocational crime refers to occasional economic crimes committed by respectable members of society outside of an occupational context

Avocational crimes are similar to the concepts of occasional property crime, folk crime and mundane crime

Occasional crime is an amateur, small-scale property theft or destruction

Avocational Crime and White Collar Crime
Folk crimes apply to everyday deviance, like traffic violations and poaching
Mundane crimes are commonplace, innocuous, and often dull or routine opportunistic forms of lawbreaking with relatively low visibility
Avocational crimes include:
Evading personal taxes
Defrauding insurance companies
Providing false statements in connection with personal loans and obtaining credit
Stealing services
Stealing copyrighted material

Income Tax Evasion
Income tax evasion is classified as a form of occupational or individual white collar crime
Failure to comply with tax law may take different forms
Failure to file, non-reporting of income, underreporting of income, etc.
Tax evasion defined by the IRS is:
An act involving deceit, subterfuge, and concealment. It is, of course, illegal
However, tax avoidance, the arraignment of a taxpayer’s affairs to minimize tax liability, is legal

Income Tax Evasion
The complexity of tax law makes it difficult to distinguish between tax evasion and tax avoidance
Income tax provides 2/3 of federal tax revenue
The IRS has been more vigorous in the pursuit of tax protesters (those advocating tax evasion) than of tax straddlers (those using illegal tax shelters)
According to one study, the more prevalent an individual perceives tax evasion to be, the more inclined that individual will be to commit tax evasion

Other Forms of Avocational Crime
Insurance fraud is widely recognized to be a growing problem in the U.S.
Doctors, lawyers, insurance adjusters, and the police may be involved in facilitating false injury, damage and theft claims
Much insurance fraud generally is avocational crime committed by respectable middle or upper class members of society
Much avocational crime is less stigmatizing than all forms of white collar crime because the primary victims are most typically the government or large corporations, and because the losses appear to be more abstract than for other forms of theft or fraud

WHITE COLLAR CRIME IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY 4TH ED.

CHAPTER 5
GOVERNMENTAL CRIME:
STATE CRIME AND POLITICAL WHITE COLLAR CRIME
Trusted Criminals
Designed by: Jordan Land, M.S.

Governmental Crime: Some Basic Crimes
Abuse of power is perhaps the broadest charge of governmental crime – it has no fixed meaning

In its broader meaning, abuse of power occurs when the state assumes and exercises power it ought not to have

The full range of governmental abuses of power entails many forms of harm, including violations of universally defined basic human rights

Governmental Crime: Some Basic Crimes
A second basic concept associated with governmental crime is corruption

Political corruption most typically involves the misuse of political office for material advantage, although it also encompasses acts undertaken for political advantage

Bribery is probably the activity most closely associated with political corruption

Governmental Crime: Some Basic Crimes
The concept of political scandal is important to our understanding of state crime and political white collar crime

Such scandals are most likely to occur when a basic division of power exists in society, when a major external threat to society is lacking, and when politicians violate widely supported norms about proper conduct in political office

Governmental Criminality on an Epic Scale
At its most extreme, anarchism holds that the state is a criminal enterprise

If unjustly depriving people of their property, their way of life, and their very lives is regarded as criminal, conquests and state sanctioned wars are governmental crimes of extraordinary scope

Over time, the state became the largest and most efficient users of violence, a dubious distinction it originally shared with bandits and pirates

Governmental Criminality on an Epic Scale
War crimes are:
The use of poisonous gases, biological and chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, and mines, indiscriminate attacks against civilians, etc.

Only captured members of the losing side have been brought to account for war crimes

Most war crimes go unpunished

The Vietnam War
The U.S. engagement in the Vietnam War was illegal under U.S. law because Congress never specifically declared war, which is required by the Constitution
Some observers consider the destruction of millions of arable acres and hardwood forests to be an ecological crime of immense proportions
No president, cabinet officer, or other high-level civilian or military official involved in the pursuit of the Vietnam War has ever been required to provide a formal defense for their policy decisions

U.S. Military Activity
in the “New World Order”

More recent U.S. military ventures were all criticized in some quarters as criminal actions

Despite some history of antiwar mobilization, most conspicuously during the Vietnam War, the more enduring theme in American culture has resisted the imputation of criminality to American acts of war

Forms of State Criminality

Criminal state is when some form of state criminality becomes a dominant force in the operation of the state

Accusations of state criminality are subjective and likely to incorporate an ideological dimension

The Criminal State
The controversial notion of a criminal state is most commonly applied to the ultimate criminal enterprise wherein the state is used as an instrument to commit crimes against humanity

Such as genocide
Genocide refers to a deliberate state policy of mass killing directed at some identifiable group or people

Ethnic cleansing has also been invoked in the recent era to describe large-scale killing of such groups

The Criminal State
The Holocaust perpetuated by the Nazis during World War II is perhaps the single most dramatic, fully documented, and extreme case of genocide ever

The Nuremberg Trials generated some controversy over the question of whether the Nazi leaders could be tried by the Allies when no fully recognized international criminal law existed
And whether some of the Nazis’ alleged war crimes were substantially different from those committed by the Allies

The Criminal State
Since the post-World War II trials, it has proven difficult to bring perpetrators of genocides and ethnic cleansing to justice, and much of the world has been quite indifferent to these events

The United States was one of the few countries unwilling to endorse the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court as a means in the 21st century of bringing perpetrators of state crime to justice

The Repressive State
A repressive state systematically deprives its citizens of fundamental human rights
Human rights are rights humans are naturally entitled to – what the Declaration of Independence so eloquently called “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”
Until World War I, the matter of human rights was essentially a domestic concern

The Repressive State
The United Nations was formed after World War II, partly in response to the gross and conspicuous abuse of the most fundamental human rights by the totalitarian governments of the time

Though the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 identified a long list of fundamental human rights, the United Nations has not been able to impose these standards on any government

The Repressive State

The principle motivating factor in the imposition of a repressive system of government is the extension or retention of power, often for its own sake

The Corrupt State
Corrupt state refers to a government used as an instrument to enrich its leadership

Although corruption is thought of principally as a major function of economic crime against citizens of a country
Corruption kills when it plays a role in building collapses during “natural” disasters like earthquakes

Corruption is virtually an institutionalized part of the political system in some countries

The Corrupt State
What accounts for such entrenched patterns of corruption?
Absence of a civil service “work ethic”, extreme economic inequality, a lack of disciplined leadership, extensive bureaucratic powers, cultural norms favoring tribal loyalties over integrity, and the absence of countervailing forces such as opposition parties or a free press
If political corruption is to be diminished, a fundamental transformation of the entire administrative structure and related cultural norms must take place

State Negligence
State negligence describes a situation in which “crimes of omission” are committed

The state fails to prevent loss of human life, suffering, and deprivation that are in its power to prevent
Malfeasance- doing something you are prohibited from doing
Nonfeasance- failing to do something you are required to do
Misfeasance- performing a permissible act in an improper manner

State Negligence
The most serious form of negligent state criminality involves the unnecessary and premature loss of life that occurs when the government and its agents fail to act affirmatively in certain situations
Hurricane Katrina has been characterized as a form of state crime of omission

The concept of state negligence could be extended to include inadequate or inefficient government responses to poverty in general, to crime, to environmental degradation, and the like

State-Organized Crime
State-organized crimes are acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their job as representatives of the state

Piracy is one of the earliest forms of state-organized crime

Other forms include:
State complicity in smuggling, assassinations, criminal conspiracies, spying on citizens, diverting funds illegally, etc.

State-Organized Crime
The U.S. government has had a long history of direct involvement in overthrowing foreign governments
While these operations have been justified by a rhetoric of liberation or national security, there is much evidence that the interests of Americans businesses were often at the core of these military ventures
In the modern era, states have been accused of carrying out state crime terrorism directly when they engage in massive bombing of civilian populations

The White House and State-Organized Crime
Some of the most significant state-organized crime in the U.S. has emanated directly from the White House
President Nixon had secret wiretaps that were used against journalists and government officials suspected of being disloyal to the White House agenda in Vietnam and elsewhere
This improper wiretapping scheme provided a basis for one of the articles of impeachment drawn up against President Nixon

The White House and State-Organized Crime
The single most celebrated case of state-organized crime was the Iran-Contra Affair

The principal illegality involved was the violation of the Boland Amendment
Prohibited covert aid to the Contras
The Iran-Contra case involved a conspiracy to violate the Boland Act

The Central Intelligence Agency
The CIA was created after World War II to prevent another Pearl Harbor
In 1975, a congressional investigation uncovered clear evidence that the CIA had periodically violated its own charter
New evidence of this illegal activity surfaced in 2007
The CIA has been accused of having a rightwing bias and of placing its own interests ahead of other considerations

The Federal Bureau of Investigation
The FBI generally enjoyed a reputation for integrity and high professional standards
After Hoover’s death, it emerged that the FBI had been engaging in warrantless wiretapping and unauthorized domestic spying for decades
From the mid-1950s on, the FBI had engaged in extralegal and illegal disruption and destabilization of dissident political groups though COINTELPRO, the umbrella for various counterintelligence programs

The Federal Bureau of Investigation
Over many decades, Hoover maintained secret files on public officials

The FBI has sometimes mounted undercover operations and used deceitful tactics to produce evidence against powerful and sophisticated white collar and governmental criminals

Police Crime
Police crime can be a form of state-organized crime involving the abuse of power and can also be an occupational crime, primarily corruption

It is not always possible to differentiate between organizational and personal motivations or objective

Police crime involves:
Violations of constitutional rights, excessive use of force, and related illegal acts to fulfill state or departmental objectives

Police Crime
The most serious form of police brutality is the sometime-fatal misuse of deadly force

Police brutality has rarely been prosecuted and only in recent decades has this situation improved with the establishment of civilian review boards, citizen mobilization and more attentive press

Other forms of police crime include:
Perjury, searches without warrants, false arrests, and tampering with evidence

Political System Corruption
The electoral process and inter-party competition in society promotes forms of corruption

Once politicians gain the power of office, they more often than not attempt to hold on to it

It has never been illegal for politicians to propose, endorse, or push through policies and programs that still benefit special interests and constituents, as long as no direct quid pro quo exists

Corruption in the Electoral Financing Process

We tend to view political corruption in individualistic terms because it is easier and more reassuring to focus on individual wrongdoers

The financing of elections and the related practice of legislative lobbying are two integral parts of the political system that promote corruption

Corruption in the Electoral Financing Process

Since the federal election financing reforms of the early 1970s, political action committees (PACs) became a vastly more important element in the financing of elections

This form of legalized bribery not only gives incumbents an enormous financial advantage over challengers but has been demonstrated to influence legislators’ voting records as well

Political White Collar Crime
in the Executive Branch
No U.S. President has been convicted of using this high office for personal enrichment
Many are alleged to have engaged in unethical or specifically illegal conduct for economic gain
George Washington was alleged to have engaged in suspect land deals early in his career
Although President Clinton was accused of various offenses, including perjury, these charges for the most part did not allege personal enrichment

Political White Collar Crime
in the Executive Branch

Vice presidents have sometimes been targets of accusations of wrongdoing

Schuyler Colfax (VP in Ulysses Grant’s first administration) was accused of accepting bribes and was politically ruined even though he was never formally charged

Political White Collar Crime
in the Executive Branch

Many other high-level members of various presidential administrations have been charged with specific criminal acts

Samuel Swartout was charged with having embezzled more than $1 million

The complex intersection of big money and major governmental power on this level generates endless opportunities for corruption

Corruption in State Government

In the course of the 20th century, 15 sitting American governors or former governors were indicted or convicted of such charges as conspiracy, fraud, perjury, bribery, racketeering and income tax evasion

These charges typically involved accepting stocks or taking bribes from contractors and others doing business with the state in return for political favors

Corruption in State Government
Corruption on the state level is hardly restricted to governors
Countless other state and county officials have been charged with various forms of corruption
During the colonial period, local governors were often guilty of embezzling, taking bribes, and reserving for themselves the right to rent out city property and sell liquor for profit

Corruption in State Government

The single most famous example of political machine corruption is New York City’s Tammany Hall

The Tweed Ring defrauded the City of New York of up to $200 million through vastly inflated purchases and repairs, false vouchers, fictitious bills and other such devices

Political White Collar Crime
in the Legislative Branch
James Madison believed that Congress was less corruptible than the executive branch in part because of its large number of members and diluted power
The Credit Mobilier affair was the first major public scandal concerning congressional corruption
Since this Credit Mobilier affair, major congressional corruption scandals have erupted in the form of:
Junketing
Double billing
Free mailing privilege
Using congressional staff for personal purposes

Political White Collar Crime in the Legislative Branch
Lobbyists are often at the center of legislative corruption cases
Tom DeLay was forced out of his leadership role and Congressional seat after being indicted for violation of state election laws and for corrupt dealings with lobbyists
Jack Abramoff bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars while showering gifts, free travel, and donations on Congressmen and other political officials

Political White Collar Crime
in the Judicial Branch
The judicial branch has probably been the least tainted by claims of corruption, but it has not been free of such claims

Judges have been charged with many crimes:
Bribery
Extortion
Obstructing justice
Income tax evasion
Embezzlement
Fraud
Abuse of authority

Political White Collar Crime
in the Judicial Branch
Many judges so charged have been forced to resign
Others have been impeached, censured, or disbarred
Some have gone to prison
Judges are in a position to abuse their considerable power
Because judges are relatively well compensated and enjoy considerable prestige, they have relatively less to gain and much more to lose by engaging in criminal conduct