White Collar Crimes Classic And Contemporary

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

For any research work, review of previous literature and studies related to the subject under research is of prime significance as it provides foundation and direction for further research. Each generation of scholars learns from the previous generation. Such reviews also lead to indicators and hypothesis based on which past studies were conducted and conclusions drawn.

Foreign Literature

A lot of foreign researches exist on white collar crime however; a very significant work by ‘Geis & Meier’ has been included in foreign literature review because of its holistic and historical importance and relevance to the present research topic. This book titled ‘White-Collar Crimes: Classic and Contemporary View’ is considered to be an inescapable necessity to conceptualize and contextualize white-collar crimes. It is a collection of some of the first major contributions made by scholars of white-collar crimes. The significance of their work remains in the field although their work and ideas have been extended and amplified by later scholars. However, the collection of articles included in said book cannot be ignored simply because these were among the first attempts made to explore the new academic area of white-collar crimes. [1] 

The book has been divided into three parts. The first article in part I of this book titled "white-Collar Criminality" is the text of the landmark presidential address that Edwin.H.Sutherland presented before a joint session of American Sociological Society in 1939, while he presented and coined the term white-collar crime. This landmark address in fact changed the accepted conceptions and explanations of criminal behavior. In this article, the author describes the elite class as criminal from a sociological perspective. The second article titled "Who is Criminal? is also by Sutherland, protects his concept of white-collar crime against scholars particularly with legal background who then criticized Sutherland for mounting campaign against the elite without legal footings. In this article, Sutherland explains his concept of white-collar crime purely with sociological perspective. The third article was written by Paul (1947). He was a lawyer-sociologist who contested that Sutherland’s concept of white-collar crime on juridical and legal grounds. His main argument was that only convicted persons may be labeled as criminals.

The fourth article is written by Daly Kathleen on Gender and varieties of white-collar crime. This article deals with participation of women in white-collar crimes. A major conclusion of her work is that occupational compulsions provide motivation for white-collar crime by women (Daly, 1989). The fifth article titled "The consequences of White-Collar Crime" is written by Robert.F.Meier and James F.Short (1983). Their work explains that every social activity carries some element of harm and any legitimate activity connected with white-collar crime ruptures the social fabric of society. The sixth article by Randall (1987) titled ‘The Portrayal of Business Malfeasance in the Elite and General Media’. The author deals with white-collar crimes and the role of media particularly print and electronic media. The study concludes that both types of media devote extensive space to business crimes. It also finds that network media paid more coverage to early stages of a business crime and less coverage at the time of sentencing. The seventh article by Braithwaite (1985), presents a detailed and historical review of research on white-collar crimes even before Sutherlands, style of contemporary on generalizations, modus operandi studies, implications of white-collar crime research and its impact on public policy.

Part II of the book focuses on corporate and professional white-collar crime [2] . The first article of this part explores antitrust cases of 1961 in General Electrical Corporation (Geis, 1967). This study placed emphasis on more research work and finds that antitrust cases discussed are only one of a number of other instances. The second article of this part titled ‘fire in hamlet: a case study of state-corporate crime’ presents a review of fire in September 1993 at the imperial food products chicken processing plant in hamlet , North Carolina. It is an analytical presentation of white-collar criminality among corporate bodies, federal and local government officials whose commissions, omissions and negligence and cost cutting in implementation of occupational and safety hazards regulations. The third article by Mintz (1985) included in this part is titled ‘Corporate Greed, women and the Dalkon shield’. It presents an analysis of misdeed for profit of a company selling intrauterine device for birth control that was promoted as most safe device whereas it was dangerous for use. The study highlights that few men with little on their minds accept the pursuits of megabucks, made decisions, in the interest of profit, that exposed millions of women to serious infections, sterility and even deaths.

There are three more articles explaining deviance in corporate world dealing with savings and loan scandal, insider trading, medic aid fraud and professional deviance among lawyers. [3] Part III of the book consists of four articles and mainly deals with sentencing and enforcement covering case studies from American deviant corporate entities. Part IV consists of 6 articles that deal with conceptualizing white-collar crimes with main perspective of etiological and theoretical aspects of white-collar criminality. Later these articles proved landmark efforts in understanding causes of white-collar criminality. The first article by James William Coleman in this part explains the theory of motivation and opportunity, the second article by Travis Hirshi and Michael Gottfredson deals with causes of white-collar crime and presents a general theory of crime. The third article of this series has been written by Darrell J. Steffensmeier and it presents a critical review of general theory of crime. The fourth article of the series has been written by Donald.R. Cressey and deals with poverty of theory in corporate crime research. The fifth article of the series has been written by john Braithwaite and Brent Fisse and deals with plausibility of corporate crime control. The seventh and closing article has been written by Gilbert Geis and it presents a critical and scholarly review of theoretical frame work presented by Cressey and Braithwaite.

Local Literature

The phenomenon of corruption in Pakistani society is as old as the Pakistani society itself. During country’s life span of about 60 years, systematic studies to probe into etiological aspects of this phenomenon were rarely conducted in the past. There are some occasional studies to examine corruption in society that were conducted through governmental commissions, committees and study groups. A total of seven local research studies on white collar crime have been conducted so far under the government auspices as mentioned below:

Chuuingham Committee Report, 1934

Mohsin Ali Committee Report, 1959

Justice Constantine Commission Report, 1959

Law Reforms Commission Report, 1958

General Mitha Police Commission Report, 1969

Justice Shafi Commission Report, 1979

Mazhar Rafi Committee Report, 1986

However, only the latest one (i.e Mazhar Rafi Committee Report,1986) has been included in the review due to obvious limitations and to avoid prolongation of research paper. Broad contents of this study are presented to establish an academic relationship with this research work and to highlight possible emerging trends. There is no scholarly work done as yet at local level on white-collar crime. This study is very useful source of literature review relevant to current work.

Mazhar Rafi Committee Report,1986

The Government was yet to implement recommendations of Justice Shafi Commission when another Committee consisting of three Federal Secretaries with Mr Mazhar Rafi, the then Federal Secretary Interior as its Chairman, was set up. The Committee constituted by the Federal Government in February 1986 was assigned the task of a comprehensive study to determine the causes of corruption in society and public services and to make recommendations for consideration of the Cabinet. [4] The Committee defined corruption as "the acquisition of legally forbidden benefits by officials or employees, bringing into question their loyalty to their employers" The Committee followed a seven fold methodology in studying the problem. These included:

a. Avoiding solitary evaluations.

b. Acquiring reliable and relevant data base.

c. Utilizing expertise of a cross section of concerned citizens through correspondence and interviews.

d. Arousing public interest through mass media.

e. Seeking assistance of senior state officials to gain an insight into the problem.

f. Benefiting from public sources on the subject.

g. Scanning reports of earlier commissions/committees established for this purpose.

The Committee, through advertisements in newspapers, floated a general questionnaire for the public input and elicited response from over 21000 individuals. The Committee also conducted a Gallup (Pakistan) random sample survey of a restricted ten percent respondents and also conducted National Statistical survey through the same organization. These surveys then revealed that public considered Police, Customs, WAPDA, taxation department, Land Revenue Administration and lower courts of justice, in the same order of precedence as most corrupt organs of the Government. The people believed that there has been an increase in corruption from 50% to 70/75 per cent in over the past ten years. The Committee sent a questionnaire to 1049 selected persons out of whom a bare 55 including 38 private individuals replied. The Committee interviewed 102 persons. The Committee gathered an impression as a result of interviews that respondents believed that nothing could be done to eradicate corruption. They also scanned media coverage and reached the conclusion that Government lacked public credibility in its resolve to combat the corruption.

One of the two surveys conducted by Gallup (Pakistan) under the direction of Committee found that public believed that corruption is seeped into every tier of administrative apparatus of the state from an estimated 50% ten years ago to about 70% at present (then). A big majority (again 70%) expressed the view that the average citizen cannot secure even his legitimate rights except through bribery or "sifarish" (recommendation from some influential).

The second survey, the National Statistical Survey, had more to disclose. According to this survey: [5] 

Society as a whole is corrupt.

Almost every government department is corrupt as also several corporate bodies outside the government apparatus.

More than a third of population attached no stigma to corrupt individuals.

More than a third of the population considered it ‘fair’ to indulge in practices that they themselves condemn as corrupt. A solid majority of 64% considered it to be unavoidable.

The Committee pointed out a wide gap between public and their rulers. This was substantiated from the following findings:

75% of the surveyed population believed that men in high places place themselves above the law and can get around it with impunity.

78% were convinced that men seeking elective office do so to pursue and further their own personal interests, not to promote the common good.

50% perceived that public funds are misappropriated or squandered by those in whose hands they are placed as a trust.

More than half 51% considered it useless to turn to the police for redress of their grievances.

51% were of the view that government was not sincere in its declared resolve to wage a war against corruption.

The report of the Committee laid down following five causes of corruption in society:

The arbitrary culture of power and consequent alienation of society from state.

The distortion in understanding and practice of Islam.

The distortion in political and economic order.

The distortion in concept and system of education.

The failure of the leadership and the ruling elite.

Mazhar Raffi Committee made several recommendations to eradicate the corruption from the society and the civil services. Some of the recommendations were similar to those made by earlier Justice Shafi Commission:

The Committee emphasized to evolve a sound and stable democratic federal order with adequate provision of a peaceful transfer of power through fair and regular elections. The Committee made this recommendation understandably in view of repeated military takeover of governments in Pakistan in the past.

Accountability through a just, competent, free and fearless judiciary supported by an equally competent and professional law enforcement mechanism.

Arbitrary and personalized rule should be replaced with rule of law.

Greater public involvement in affairs of state was emphasized to curb corruption.

Officials of political party in power should not have direct links with bureaucracy.

Basic economic needs of people must be attended to and measures should be adopted to provide them gainful and useful employment.

Each and every class of society should be given equal opportunity of economic development.

Compulsory primary education system for all boys and girls should be arranged.

The rules and procedures over regulating economy with bureaucratic corruption should be streamlined.

The salaries of all categories of government employees should be reviewed and realistically fixed in relation to cost of living and level of responsibility.

Provision of constitutional safeguard to service security, selection, promotion should be ensured.

Freedom of information should be protected through a single unified ‘Freedom of Information Act’.

A quick disposal mechanism should be evolved so that the cases in judicial courts are not delayed.

Special Parliamentary institutions for accountability should be established to oversee all governmental departments, autonomous bodies and political office holders.

A sustainable anti-corruption mechanism may be established with complete overhaul of existing system of anti-corruption agencies.

Justification of the Literature and Studies

The above studies have definite relationship with the current research work from many angles. Although each study does not cover complete spectrum of this research work but it partially covers the essence of this study. Cumulatively, the literature reviewed in this part to large extent covers matter in question. Current review of literature has been carried out keeping in mind the range and dimension connected with this work. These studies have been selected for review because of their close relevance with this work and are in consonance with aims of this study. This also justifies this research work highlighting the existence of a social problem for the last many decades, with which the society is confronted. To large extent literature reviewed for this work is academically credible and relevant to this study.

. Mazhar Rafi Committee Report, more or less, is relevant comprehensively to the subject matter of this humble work. The common trends in past studies have been the feeling of existence of problems of white-collar criminality and need for its eradication for collective happiness and prosperity in the society.