Jobs and Punishment: Public Opinion on Leniency for White-Collar Crime (original) (raw)

The Reaction Towards White Collar Crime: When White Collar Crime Matters

The Open Criminology Journal, 2013

In the present article, we analyze socio-demographic profiles regarding wrongful attitudes toward white-collar crime. This is a well-researched area, however where the vast majority of the studies comes from the USA and UK. In this paper we will investigate wrongful attitudes in a different context-Sweden. We will furthermore not only focus on those having a restricted view of white collar crime, but also people with a liberal view, i.e. people who do not consider white collar crime to be seriously wrong. To identify different groups regarding attitudes towards white collar crime we have used Latent Class Analyses, with the result that we can identify four different groups, among which we focus on a large group (containing 35 % of the sample) having the most restricted view of white collar crime, and a small group (4.5 % of the sample) having the most liberal view of white collar crime. The socio-demographic profile of people having a restricted view of white collar crime is quite similar to the previous research. The restricted group consists in general of elderly women that infrequently uses Internet. The liberal group is in great extent an opposite group-containing young men regularly using Internet. We conclude that it is the latter group that is of most interest for future research, not the least because it is a group that may be breeding general distrust, which may strain the society's social solidarity and trustfulness.

Sanctioning corporate crime: How do business executives and the public compare?

American Journal of Criminal Justice, 1989

Previous literature on attitudes toward the punishment or seriousness of criminal behavior has largely neglected to focus systematically upon five issues: (1) public perceptions of corporate illegality rather than perceptions of street crime or other forms of white-collar lawlessness; (2) how evaluations are conditioned by the degree of culpability and harm an offense involves; (3) the circumstances under which citizens will support the use of legal sanctions against an individual executive as opposed to a corporate entity; (4) the public's willingness to support criminal as opposed to civil intervention into various kinds of illegal corporate activities; and (5) how business executives' atlJtudes toward corporate legal sanctioning compare to those held by the general public. Through a survey of residents and business executives in a midwestem metropolitan area, an attempt was made to shed light on these issues. The analysis revealed a pervasive willingness among the sample to embrace the use of civil sanctions against corporations regardless of the circumstances surrounding the conduct being rated. By contrast, advocacy of civil remedies against executives and criminal penaltms against either the corporation or its executives was found to vary considerably according to the culpability and harm manifested by a given illegal act. Also, public support for sanctioning corporate behavior was consistently higher than the support evidenced by executives, especially where the sanctions were directed at individual corporate managers.

PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WHITE COLLAR CRIME CULPABILITY: BRIBERY, PERJURY, AND FRAUD

We are accustomed to thinking of "crime" as involving the most blameworthy and antisocial sorts of conduct in which citizens can engage, conduct that is clearly and unambiguously more wrongful than conduct that is not criminal. But the reality is more complex, especially when we look at certain kinds of "white collar" behavior. One of us (Green) has previously undertaken an in-depth investigation of the underlying moral concepts that distinguish white collar crime from "merely aggressive behavior." 1 This work attempted to differentiate, for example, between criminal fraud and "sharp dealing," insider trading and "savvy investing," bribery and "horse trading," tax evasion and "tax avoidance," extortion and "hard bargaining," witness tampering and "witness preparation," and perjury and "wiliness on the witness stand." 2 Such analysis often depended on fairly fine-grained distinctions in moral reasoning. The problem is that the ability of criminal law to stigmatize, to achieve legitimacy, and to gain compliance ultimately depends on the extent to which it enjoys moral credibility and recognition in the broader lay community. 3

Do perceptions of punishment vary between white-collar and street crimes?

Journal of Criminal Justice, 2007

Much has been learned about the relationship between sanction threat perceptions and criminal activity, yet little remains known about the factors that are associated with sanction threat perceptions. Moreover, because most researchers had studied deterrence within the context of street crime, even less is known about the factors that relate to sanction threat perceptions for white-collar crime. This study used data from a national probability sample to examine whether the determinants of perceived sanction certainty and severity for street crime were different from white-collar crime. Using robbery and fraud as two exemplars, the findings indicated that while public perceptions of sanction certainty and severity suggested that street criminals were more likely to be caught and be sentenced to more severe sanctions than white-collar criminals, respondent's perceptions of which type of crime should be more severely punished indicated that both robbery and fraud were equally likely to be perceived 'on par.' Additional results indicated that the correlates of certainty and severity were more similar than different, but that the results differed according to whether respondents were asked about the punishment that white-collar offenders were likely to receive as opposed to what they should receive.

Fines, Leniency, Rewards and Organized Crime: Evidence from Antitrust Experiments

2008

Leniency policies and rewards for whistleblowers are being introduced in ever more …elds of law enforcement, though their deterrence e¤ects are often hard to observe, and the likely e¤ect of changes in the speci…c features of these schemes can only be observed experimentally. This paper reports results from an experiment designed to examine the e¤ects of …nes, leniency programs, and reward schemes for whistleblowers on …rms'decision to form cartels (cartel deterrence) and on their price choices. Our subjects play a repeated Bertrand price game with di¤erentiated goods and uncertain duration, and we run several treatments di¤erent in the probability of cartels being caught, the level of …ne, the possibility of self-reporting (and not paying a …ne), the existence of a reward for reporting. We …nd that …nes following successful investigations but without leniency have a deterrence e¤ect (reduce the number of cartels formed) but also a pro-collusive e¤ect (increase collusive prices in surviving cartels). Leniency programs might not be more e¢ cient than standard antitrust enforcement, since in our experiment they do deter a signi…cantly higher fraction of cartels from forming, but they also induce even higher prices in those cartels that are not reported, pushing average market price signi…cantly up relative to treatments without antitrust enforcement. With rewards for whistle blowing, instead, cartels are systematically reported, which completely disrupts subjects'ability to form cartels and sustain high prices, and almost complete deterrence is achieved. If the ringleader is excluded from the leniency program the deterrence e¤ect of leniency falls and prices are higher than otherwise. As for tacit collusion, under standard antitrust enforcement or leniency programs subjects who do not communicate (do not go for explicit cartels) tend to choose weakly higher prices than where there is no anti-trust enforcement. We also analyze post-conviction behavior, …nding that there is a strong expost deterrence (desistance) e¤ect. Moreover post-conviction prices are on average lower than before even though the average prices within cartels are the same. Finally, we …nd a strong cultural e¤ect comparing treatments in Stockholm with those in Rome, suggesting that optimal law enforcement institutions di¤er with culture.

Specific Deterrence in a Sample of Offenders Convicted of White Collar Crimes*

Criminology, 1995

It is generally argued that white-collar criminals will be particularly influenced by punishment policies. White-collar crime is seen as a highly rational form of criminality, in which the risks and rewards are carefilly evaluated by potential offenders, and white-collar criminals are assumed to have much more to lose through sanctions than more common law violators. In this article we examine the impact of sanctions on the criminal careers of 742 offenders convicted of white-collar crimes in seven US. district courts between fiscal years 1976 and 1978. Utilizing data on court-imposed sanctions originally compiled by Wheeler et al. (1988b), as well as information on subsequent criminal behavior provided by the Identification Bureau of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we assess the effect of imprisonment upon the oficial criminal records of people convicted of white-collar crimes. Comparing prison and no-prison groups that were matched in terms of factors that led to their receipt of a prison sanction, we find that prison does not have a specific deterrent impact upon the likelihood of rearrest over a 126-month follow-up period. Although scholars have focused increasing attention upon the criminal careers of street criminals, they have largely overlooked those of whitecollar offenders. Behind this neglect lies a common assumption about the nature of white-collar criminality. In contrast to street criminals who are assumed to be highly likely to recidivate, those convicted of white-collar crimes are generally thought to be "one shot" offenders unlikely to be processed in the justice system after their initial brush with the law (see Benson, 1985; Edelhertz and Overcast, 1982; Wheeler et al., 1988a).

Public knowledge about white-collar crime: an exploratory study

A growing body of research has revealed that the financial cost and physical harmfulness of white-collar crime overshadow the impact of street crime on society. To date, scholarly efforts that have investigated societal response to crimes of the powerful have limited their field of inquiry to public opinions about white-collar crime. Although these studies have provided valuable empirical evidence of a growing concern among U.S. citizens regarding the danger posed by elite offenses, their failure to include a valid measure of lay knowledge about white-collar crime significantly limits our ability to infer the extent to which the public is familiar with the scope and magnitude of this social issue. The present study seeks to address such limitations by providing the first measure of public knowledge about white-collar crime. Four hundred and eight participants completed an online questionnaire that measured their knowledge about white-collar crime. Results revealed that participants were not sufficiently informed about it and suggest the existence of popular Bmyths^ about crimes of the powerful. These findings have important implications insofar as white-collar crime awareness programs are concerned. Hypothetically, public demand for tougher sanctions against high-status offenders could result from exposure to relevant information about white-collar crime. Nevertheless, Bmyth^ adherence might also undermine the effect of increased awareness on prosecutorial efforts against upper-class criminality.

Redefining criminality: Public attitudes to corporate and individual offending

This briefing by David Ellis and David Whyte is the second of two briefings the Centre has published on public attitudes to questionable conduct by the state, corporations and individuals. The first briefing – Redefining corruption – revealed deep public concern at the collusive relationship between successive governments and powerful private interests. This included strong support for a ban on 'revolving door' appointments, where former ministers and civil servants join private companies they have worked closely with while in government. In this briefing, the authors compare public attitudes to corruption committed by people in positions of power, with attitudes towards petty offending such as joyriding and shoplifting. The results are striking. When asked to compare police manipulation of evidence with shoplifting, 96 per cent said they considered police manipulation of evidence as on par with, or more serious than, shoplifting. Only one per cent considered shoplifting a more serious offence. Ninety-five per cent considered a pharmaceutical company overcharging the NHS as on par with, or more serious than, joyriding. Only two per cent considered joyriding the more serious offence. Despite the seriousness with which the public view such state and corporate offending, it is those suspected of petty offences such as shoplifting and joyriding who are far more likely to face arrest, prosecution and punishment. And as the authors point out, 'even in the unlikely event that corporations or their executives are punished for criminal or regulatory offences, those convictions are rarely followed by the type of stigma and social disadvantage that affects other types of offenders'. The authors are not arguing that corporate criminals should be subjected to long prison sentences. But they do propose sanctions for corporate and state crime that might be more in keeping with the seriousness with which the public view such offences. These range from public shaming – an advert in a newspaper for instance – to a 'corporate death penalty', in which major corporate malfeasance might result in forced nationalisation or company closure. This briefing therefore raises a number of important questions for anyone interested in how harmful practices – whether perpetrated by individuals or collectively by corporate or state bodies – might best be responded to and reduced.