Introduction

White collar crime is crimes involving commercial fraud, cheating consumers, swindles, insider trading on the stock market, embezzlement and other forms of dishonest business schemes. The term comes from the out of date assumption that business executives wear white shirts and ties. It also theoretically distinguishes these crimes and criminals from physical crimes, supposedly likely to be committed by "blue collar" workers. (Free Dictionary) Through Edwin Sutherland’s studies of 70 of America’s large corporations, he found that these companies had violated antitrust, false advertising, bribery, and other laws 980 times, or 14 on average. (Barkan) With such a highlight on the street crimes throughout the urban areas of America, it seems the public turns their face to the crime that happens on our television screens, on wall street and in these corporations we give money to our have products by. The three main elements of white collar crime are occupational crime, which is usually committed by one person in search of personal gain, organizational crime, which is committed for the sake of the organization (done by people of the organization, a help me help you method), and the final element being corporate financial crime, this element includes false advertisement, cheating, price fixing and other parts of corruption.

White collar crime receives little to no attention in the media. Why is this? The numbers don’t add up and it seems that the big corporations have more pull than the people representing the law. With power comes a lot. And the power behind these white collar criminals no word can describe. A corporate boss can take millions out of the pockets of people and just lose his job and continue counting his money on his private jet, while a low life criminal takes the tip jar out of a pizza restaurant and receive months to years in jail. Now you tell me if that makes any sense. But when you compare street crime to white collar crime you can notice very shocking statistics. When it comes to the dollar amount between the two street crime has the amount of $16 billion in totals while white collar crime holds the amount for $575 billion. Now what cost more? Let us take a look into the death totals. Street crime counts for 14, 612 homicides while white collar crime counts for 102,100 deaths. Another shocking statistic for a crime that receives such lenient treatment.

       

White collar crime is the silent killer in this country. With the lenient treatment of corporate criminals, the weak/absent regulations in place for the crimes, soft punishment and lack of news/media coverage. It leaves a public blind to the crime that hurts the most. Yes street crime is more graphic and scary but that is all we ever see, all we ever hear about. They don’t show us the effects of white collar crime so we think nothing of it, without the spread of the word and knowledge of these crimes, the drama will continue. And behind closed doors they pull the strings in this play of life while we just ride along.