White Collar Crime

White Collar crime is an quickly arising topic in the field of criminal justice. It has just recently been made all the more popular with the high profile court cases of companies like Enron and Martha Stewart. In the course text book, Controversies in White Collar Crime by Gary W. Potter, author of the book Thinking About Crime Professor James Q. Wilson, “dismisses the importance of white collar crime…”. He argues four different points of why white collar crime is not “real” crime or should be taken as serious as the so called conventinal crime we think about every day. The first essence of real crime is, “the arousal of fear and the occurrence of injury”, the second, “a rending asunder of the social contract”, third, “the commission of acts that are not merely dangerous but more importantly immoral”, and last, “the commission of acts that are clear violations of criminal statues” (Potter Pg1). Professor Wilson believes that these four statements separate “real” crime form white collar crime. Prof. Wilson is just trying to increase that idea that “real” crime is what the nation should be focused on, based on the square and circle figure being used in our class the criminal justice community is missing a very large portion of crime that is in fact causing more damage to the nation than all the real crime put together.

Prof Wilson argues that real crime is definable because it causes fear in the minds of innocent and potential victims. It is true that through the daily news barrage of police reports that stories about a homicide or rape that the American people are being scared into thinking that the nation is going through a epidemic of insanity. But this is farther from the truth, we can site a “…unbroken, 27-year pattern of declining victimization” (Potter Pg2) from real crime. The American people are afraid of being mugged, assaulted or even killed walking down the street, but the facts back up that white collar crime is more likely to cause you harm than a complete stranger in the middle of a dark alley. “Street crimes are generally estimated by the FBI’s uniform crime reports to be between $10 billion and $13.5 billion a year”, while, “the annual cost of corporate crimes fall between $174 billion and $231 billion a year.” (Potter Pg 3). That is average losses of, “about $2,608 per person, far in excess of the average loss of less than $62 dollars for street crimes” (Potter Pg 3). The number of individuals injured while on the job due to safety violations is, “…26 times the total number of simple and aggravated assaults committed every year in the United States” (Potter Pg 4). Even more astounding is the ratio of individuals killed on the job to homicides in a year in the United States, it is almost 10 to 1. Prof. Wilson is reading his facts wrong if he is not the least bit fearful of white collar crime, but the news media is making his “real” crime out to be an undefeatable monster.

The social contract Prof. Wilson is talking about is an unwritten agreement between individuals and the government. The individuals agree to get along and behave in accordance with the laws set forth by the government, while the government agrees to protect the individuals and work for the best interest of everyone. Prof. Wilson argues that individuals break that contract and are punished