NCJ Number
138020
Journal
Crime, Law and Social Change Volume: 17 Issue: 3 Dated: (May 1992) Pages: 235-252
Date Published
1992
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This article reviews the U.S. Justice Department's selection of white-collar crime as a top investigative priority in the 1970's and its meaning for conflict theory as an explanation of legislative and government action.
Abstract
The "discovery" of white-collar crime by the Justice Department highlights some of the fundamental issues associated with the origins of law. The Justice Department's emphasis on white-collar crime is especially problematic for the instrumentalist and structuralist variants of conflict theory, which generally view the origins of law in terms of the interests of a ruling or capitalist class. The pursuit of white-collar criminals by the State is apparently antithetical to these two perspectives. The contradiction is only apparent, however, since in a democratic society the State must maintain legitimacy with the citizenry by targeting those crimes that the citizens perceive as threatening to them. The 1970's emphasis on white-collar crime followed the Watergate period, when government corruption was foremost in citizens' minds. The instrumentalist and structuralist explanations of government action, however, have subsequently been confirmed by the Justice Department's conscious shift from Sutherland's definition of white-collar crime as that committed by the socioeconomic elite. The Justice Department's definition of white-collar crime focuses more on the nature of the offenses than the class of the persons who commit the crimes. Under the Reagan Justice Department, white-collar crime enforcement became less of a response to a crisis of confidence in government and more of a way to protect Federal programs from fraud, waste, and abuse. 75 footnotes