In our previous article we started looking at explanations and theories of white-collar crime and wondering why someone in the upper classes would choose to commit crime when they have no real desperation and so much to lose. Here are some more explanations, including a perhaps more psychological look at this topic.
Subcultural theories go some way to explaining white collar crime. In these theories, individuals feel that there is no way of reaching the goals given to them by normal society. They therefore decide to create their own, more achievable goals, which may be criminal, and working towards these allows them to feel important and successful still. This can be seen in businesses when fellow workers boast about how well they have conned a client. The businessman who does this has accepted that he cannot make money fairly, but therefore takes on the role of the con-man and accepts it. Now that this is his role, he will attempt to fulfil it to the very best of his ability. In the office, the new goal will become to act as criminally as possible.
There are also more traditional psychological theories about why people commit white-collar crime. One reason is that diffusion of responsibility occurs in the workplace. This was discussed previously as a reason why it is so difficult to catch white-collar criminals, but it also acts as a cause of white-collar crime. When there is a hierarchical structure to an organisation, it is very easy to blame people on different levels for committing white collar crime. For example, when an individual does not carry out the proper safety checks on a cruise-ship and the cruise-ship then sinks, the person who was supposed to make the checks can just say that their manager did not train them properly with regards to this, and the manager will say that they have and that it is impossible to oversee every little check themselves, or they may say that it is the CEO’s fault since the correct checks were not written into their training guidelines. This links to the anomie aspect discussed earlier, since often people are not entirely sure what it is their responsibility to do, and the responsibility for making the checks falls to several people, so they do not feel like they have to check them so carefully. Furthermore, diffusion of responsibility can take place when a group of men in an office are conning their customers. None of the men will feel as responsible because they can see that other people are doing the same thing. In general, the more people committing a crime, the less guilty each individual feels. In addition to this, many criminals use neutralisation techniques to make themselves feel better about committing these crimes. These stop them from feeling too guilty and also allow them to retain their upper class attitude about what they are doing. Examples of this include blaming the customers themselves for being so gullible or making out that the customers are bad people in the first place and so deserve to be made victims. Criminals may also deny the harm caused by their crime, saying ‘There’s no real singular victim, so it’s alright’.
These reasons for committing crime appear very reasonable, and there does seem to be support for the ability of general theories to understand white-collar crime, even if they need a little adapting. In the next article on the topic though, I will look at where general theory cannot explain white-collar crime so well and what Sutherland suggests is a better explanation for this type of crime.
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