The Victims and Offenders of White Collar Crimes

White Collar Crimes

White collar crimes are nonviolent crimes that are committed by individuals within business organizations with the motive of financial gains (Sutherland, 2017). Generally, these crimes involve illegal activities that are performed by people within the normal course of business duties that entail bribery, fraud, embezzlement, and extortion of financial resources. In the long run, the perpetrators benefit with financial gains acquired from the criminal activities. This paper discusses the victims and offenders of white collar crimes and its effect on class, race, and gender in criminal justice.

Victims of White Collar Crimes

Victims of white collar crimes are the individuals who suffer from the nonviolent acts that lead to loss of financial resources (Benson & Simpson, 2014). These victims are broadly classified into voluntary and involuntary victims. Voluntary victims are the people who get exploited by money swindlers who promise fast bucks (Sutherland, 2017). They include creditors, employees, customers and business competitors. On the other hand, involuntary victims are those individuals who get exploited in their routine commercial transactions composed of economic activities. Offenders of white collar crimes are the persons or organizations involved in perpetration activities against the company’s policies that lead to drainage of resources away from the firms (Sutherland, 2017). These offenders contact individuals and organizations from where they establish schemes of committing financial fraud. The main difference between white collar crimes and other crimes is based on the intent of committing illegal activities. These crimes are committed by offenders with less violence in which they target the psychosocial factor in the victims.

Social Impact of White Collar Crimes

Substantially, white collar crimes result in social damage by destabilizing the economy, widening the gap between the poor and wealthy classes, and squandering resources (Benson & Simpson, 2014). In criminal justice, white collar crimes depict individuals as gender-based first-time offenders, well educated, middle-aged and trusted racial groups that are entrusted in the community or charitable organizations (Sutherland, 2017). Therefore, white collar crimes do not arise from the individual’s social personalities and groups.

References

Sutherland, E. H. (2017). White-collar criminality. In White-collar Criminal (pp. 3-19).

Routledge.

Benson, M. L., & Simpson, S. S. (2014). Understanding white-collar crime: An opportunity

            perspective. Routledge.