White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime. To what extent are the Essay

White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime. To what extent are the regulatory regimes for White Collar Crime (WCC) and Corporate Crime (CC) working - Essay Example The reason behind these concerns is simple, regulations have always prioritized street crimes over WCC and when it comes to corporations, regulations take these offences lightly. It seems governmental regulations seek their benefit in every 'large scale' crime. Apart from the legislator concern, public uphold the opinion in the following words: "There is always a lingering suspicion that the white-collar criminal is getting off leniently in our justice system". (Poveda, 1994, p. 4) In this respect, an awareness of white collar and corporate crime officially encourages us to think critically about the nature of crime and how regulations deal with it. One of the defining characteristics of white-collar crime is their conflicting characteristic both on the one hand of upstanding citizen, in terms of their contribution to voluntary civic activities for example, and on the other criminal, displayed through the harm they caused through their illegal activities (Benson, 1984). Economic or white-collar crimes are performed on a large scale, sophistically such as fraud committed on behalf of organization or against any corporation, and antitrust violations are notoriously difficult to quantify because victims often do not know they have been subject to a criminal offense. Since they are committed on a broader spectrum, therefore government is not much concerned about them as compared to other crimes. Therefore, there is no central regulation or survey application or reporting mechanism to combat with these sorts of crimes or the losses occurred by their frauds. Apart from the critics if we analyse regulatory efforts, it is clear that Government regulatory agencies after crime occurrence collect the original figure of fraud thereby reporting them as they see fit. However, it is often difficult to verify their methodology of reckoning accurate figures that can be compared in any meaningful way. Behind the continuous growth of such crimes, is the organised criminality left over from the operation of licit markets and their regulation to suggest that governmental interventions are having the unintended consequence of generating organised criminal activity within and without national boundaries. (Edwards & Gill, 2003, p. 143) Therefore, unlike violent or street crime, WCC and CC is not analysed or measured through investigations like victim surveys, or comprehensive surveys of the incidence or cost of white-collar crimes. Similarly there is no sampling methodology like fingerprints and crime definitions are seldom transparent, making comparability across crime particularly difficult. However, if the estimates are to be believed, white-collar crime causes tangible losses far in excess of tangible losses associated with street crimes. The regulatory regimes of such broad offences first determine what counts as crime in a particular society. 'Crime and Punishment' gets this right; 'Crime and Society' doesn't. Yet law, a commodity with which the state is endowed, defines and shapes not only spheres of 'outright illegality' like WCC and CC crime, but also certain 'zones of ambiguity'. The ambiguity in the state's relation to law may be evoked by saying that the state has for ages been favoring illegality directly or indirectly. This is nowhere clearer than in the way that state exaction, regulations, and prohibition influence and even determine the incidence of criminal and organized criminal activity (Farer 1999, p. 251). More than any other form of state intervention, it is