Singh, Manpreet

100286139
CRIM 1100 S50
Ch 18- White Collar Crime
White collar crime was first brought into light by Edwin Sutherland. He was the person who
coined the term white collar crime. Before that, criminologists used to think that crime was
performed by low level poverty struck people and no one used to think that people at higher
positions can commit crime.
White collar crime is defined as crime committed by a person of respectability and high social
status I the course of his occupation (P.430). There were numerous examples of people
performing white collar crime and Sutherland estimated that the cost of crimes committed by
people of high social status were more than the cost of crimes committed by the poor people.
One such example of white collar crime was of Ponzi scheme. It was developed by Charles
Ponzi and he guaranteed the investors that their investment would double in 45 days (P.432).
This was a pyramid scheme as Ponzi would have to get money from new investors and return to
old investors with some commission for himself.
White collar crime is difficult to trace as it is more complex and takes place in a work
environment. The offenders have greater influence in shaping legislation that protects them from
prosecution because most of the offenders are from the high class of the society (P.433). Public
ignorance also aids in white collar crime and can harm hundreds of thousands of people as it may
result in bankruptcy of a company causing the workers to lose their jobs. It is difficult to
prosecute a white collar crime offender as it is usually in corporate context because of which a
corporates separate legal personality allows it to be sued or charged separately from its managers
or employees giving corporate investigation or prosecution unique legal/ethical characteristics
(P.433). There is a thin line between the white collar crimes and the corporate crimes. White
collar crimes are committed by individuals for their personal benefits like: managers, making
fraudulent bills by doctors, embezzlement of trust funds by lawyers etc. On the contrary,
corporate crime is committed by a corporation or an individual acting on behalf of the
corporation (P.433). This crime may include price fixing, knowingly dumping of toxic waste,
workplace safety violations to save money, use of cheap material in construction projects are
some of the examples of corporate crime.
In order to tackle the white collar crimes and crimes committed by corporations, there are
numerous agencies set by the government to perform a check and minimize these crimes. Some
of these are: municipal, provincial and federal police to tackle embezzlement (P.437), RCMPs
market enforcement teams in Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal to tackle insider trading
and tax evasion (P.438). The Health and safety violations are seen by Health Canada and The
Canada Food Inspection Agency. The less serious crimes, the regulatory authorities may opt for
seeking compliance and may ask them to help redress the past wrongs and comply with the
regulations in the future. Another alternative for the authorities is to imply a fine of one million
per contravention and it does not require any court approval (P.444). Many cases of white collar
crimes are heard before the tribunals or boards which are specialized in the resolution of white
collar crimes, e,g. British Columbia Securities Commission, Ontario Human Rights Tribunal,
Ontario Securities Commission etc.

Singh, Manpreet
100286139
CRIM 1100 S50
Punishing Corporations for crimes can be a difficult task because there may not be a single
individual or group of individuals who can be held responsible for the crime committed by the
corporation. In addition, convicting and punishing an entire corporation for the actions of a few
individual senior level officials can negatively affect a large number of employees, shareholders
etc. There is a growing need of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (P.450) in which
corporations actively pursue compliance with the law and ethical norms as a part of doing
business.