White Collar Crime Reconsidered

An exploration of the inner workings of the individuals, corporations, and government agencies implicated in the self-interested abuse of their economic and societal privilege.

Provides a portrait of white-collar criminals and their punishments. The authors of this book argue that white-collar crime is committed largely by the middle classes and as opportunities for financial wrong-doing increase so will people's susceptability.

The book instructs corporate counsel on how to adopt forward-looking compliance policies that can prevent criminal liability and how to mitigate the severity of penalties when they are unavoidable.

A comprehensive and state-of the-art overview from internationally-recognized experts on white-collar crime covering a broad range of topics from many perspectives Law enforcement professionals and criminal justice scholars have debated the most appropriate definition of “white-collar crime” ever since Edwin Sutherland first coined the phrase in his speech to the American Sociological Society in 1939. The conceptual ambiguity surrounding the term has challenged efforts to construct a body of science that meaningfully informs policy and theory. The Handbook of White-Collar Crime is a unique re-framing of traditional discussions that discusses common topics of white-collar crime—who the offenders are, who the victims are, how these crimes are punished, theoretical explanations—while exploring how the choice of one definition over another affects research and scholarship on the subject. Providing a one-volume overview of research on white-collar crime, this book presents diverse perspectives from an international team of both established and newer scholars that review theory, policy, and empirical work on a broad range of topics. Chapters explore the extent and cost of white-collar crimes, individual- as well as organizational- and macro-level theories of crime, law enforcement roles in prevention and intervention, crimes in Africa and South America, the influence of technology and globalization, and more. This important resource: Explores diverse implications for future theory, policy, and research on current and emerging issues in the field Clarifies distinct characteristics of specific types of offences within the general archetype of white-collar crime Includes chapters written by researchers from countries commonly underrepresented in the field Examines the real-world impact of ambiguous definitions of white-collar crime on prevention, investigation, and punishment Offers critical examination of how definitional decisions steer the direction of criminological scholarship Accessible to readers at the undergraduate level, yet equally relevant for experienced practitioners, academics, and researchers, The Handbook of White-Collar Crime is an innovative, substantial contribution to contemporary scholarship in the field.

Unlike other books of its kind, Understanding White-Collar Crime: An Opportunity Perspective uses a coherent theoretical perspective in its coverage of white-collar crime. Using opportunity perspective, or the assumption that all crimes depend on offenders having some sort of opportunity to commit an offense, allows the authors to uncover the processes leading up to white-collar crimes and offer potential solutions to this rampant issue, without being reductive in their treatment of the topic. With this second edition, Benson and Simpson have greatly expanded their coverage to include new case studies, substantive materials, and an annotated appendix of online resources to make this a core book for courses on white-collar crime.

For more than three decades, rational-choice theory has reigned as the dominant approach both for interpreting crime and as underpinning for crime-control programs. Although it has been applied to an array of street crimes, white-collar crime and those who commit it have thus far received less attention. Choosing White-Collar Crime is a systematic application of rational-choice theory to problems of explaining and controlling white-collar crime. It distinguishes ordinary and upperworld white-collar crime and presents reasons theoretically for believing that both have increased substantially in recent decades. Reasons for the increase include the growing supply of white-collar lure and non-credible oversight. Choosing White-Collar Crime also examines criminal decision making by white-collar criminals and their criminal careers. The book concludes with reasons for believing that problems of white-collar crime will continue unchecked in the increasingly global economy and calls for strengthened citizen movements to rein in the increases.

As an instructor teaching white collar crime, are you frustrated by texts which leave your students feeling outraged but helpless about the subject? Assigning this new text by Mike Benson and Sally Simpson can successfully address that problem, because it explains to students why white-collar crime is so prevalent and so difficult to control. Using this text, instructors can show students how these crimes are carried out in ways that make them difficult to discover. Instructors can also show how opportunities for white-collar crimes could be reduced if we were to approach the problem from the perspective of situational crime prevention. The authors address the difficulty of controlling white-collar crime in detail, and speculate on the future of white-collar crime in the rapidly globalizing world of trans-national corporations.