White Collar Crimes

Contents

White Collar Crime 2

1. Introduction: 2

2. Historical Background: 2

3. Definition of White Collar Crime: 3

4. Sutherland’s Theory on White Collar Crime (Differential Association Theory) 6

5. Criticism of Sutherland’s views on White Collar Crime 10

6. Contributing Factors 11

7. White Collar Crimes in India 12

8. Hoarding, Black Marketing and Adulteration 13

9. Tax-evasion 14

10. White Collar Crime in certain Professions 15

Medical Profession 15

Engineering 16

Legal Profession 16

Educational Institutions 17

White collar crime distinguished from traditional crime 18

11. Remedial Measures 20

Conclusion 23

White Collar Crimes

1. Introduction:

It is common knowledge that certain professions offer lucrative opportunities for criminal acts and unethical practices which hardly attract public attention. There have been crooks and unethical persons in business, various professions and even in public life. They tend to become unscrupulous because of their neglect at school, home and other social institutions where people get training for citizenship and character building. These deviants have scant regard for honesty and other ethical values. Therefore they carry on their illegal activities with impunity without the fear of loss of prestige or status. The crimes of this nature are called ‘white collar crimes’ and they are essentially an outcome of competitive economy of mid-twentieth century.

2. Historical Background:

The concept of white collar crime is usually associated with E.H. Sutherland whose penetrating work in this area focused the attention of criminologists on its demoralizing effect on the total crime picture. Sutherland point out that besides the traditional crimes such as assault, robbery, dacoity, murder, rape, kidnapping and other acts involving violence, there are certain anti-social activities which the persons of upper strata carry on in course of their...