your opinion 38
read each paragraph give me your opinion if you agree it just agree on it
1.
White Collar Crime is defined as “distinguished by location of the offense, status of the offender and the nature of the behaviors”(Payne, Brian K.). In my own words White Collar Crime is when criminals do not want to physically harm anyone but want to gain or procure money, drugs, power, or position. This is uphill battle for Law Enforcement because there is no body or traditional physical evidence left behind after the crime has been committed. The different task force for White Collar Crimes would consist of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). These task force were created to have a more focused approach to certain type of crimes. Rather than having Law Enforcement that enforces a broad range of laws, these task force enforce a more specific set of laws.
The Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) is used to fight organized crimes such as organizations that sell drugs, racketeering, and human trafficking. Organized crime is defined as crimed to make money by selling drugs or inflicting harm on others. With these crimes, there is physical evidence that can show a crime was committed.
Different Agencies in Law Enforcement work together to fight crime because these agencies have a different set of resources and tools use to fight crime. For example, if ATF is to discover that a business is utilizing inside sharing to make more profits from stocks, they would not be as efficient in solving this crime.
Challenges encountered by law enforcement and prosecutors of working with diverse group of local, state and federal law enforcement officers would be the struggle of lines of jurisdictions, lack of man power to enforce the laws. I think the biggest struggle with White Collar Crime is to fight the crime without having the risk of the officers being paid off by the people they are trying to arrest. I watch a TV show about a business that hides all of the evidence of the illegal activity they do from the ASA office. The ASA know that the business is breaking the law but it is so hard to prove because every time they have a lead, the informant is paid off. This is a common problem when fighting this type of crime because the officer or agent would have more to gain by turning a blind eye.
2.
From my understanding of white-collar crime is the criminal act that occurred within certain business field for basically financial gained or profits. According to Payne, white-collar crime can be divided into two types such as corporate and occupational crime. A corporation crime which more likely to be classify as an illegal crime that committed by employees of a corporation just to beneficial of the business while for an occupational crime is just violation of employer who attend to steal insider info or product within the workplace to sale out separately. For example; Some businesses might have formal dress codes while others might have casual Fridays. Some companies might tolerate workers taking small quantities of the goods it produces home each night, while other companies might define that behavior as inappropriate and criminal. The expectations for a workplace behavior defined by the workplace concept of regulation that apply where one must be willing to obey and follow all procedure without complain nor abiding rules to pursuit with what obviously consider a wrongdoer.
White-collar crime categorizes in most case to be very difficult to prosecute because of the complex involvement system related to such crime of fraud, forgery, cybercrime, and extortion prosecutor must make sure to trace every bit of information related to a case involve of whit-collar so that before the claim can considering. Therefore, different agencies including government official has develop multiple set of standards throughout organization that must remain follow in upon providing services integrity and morality because committing a white-collar is basically the violation of regulatory law.
Working in such a diverse group of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers the challenge can very difficult when investigating or prosecuting white-collar because, some of the case require lots of details to dig before one can officially come with good result. For instance, working in a case of fraud require to have multiple elements present just to proper construct that case such; statement that show material fact occurred for sure, lost happened due to false statement, and proof of evidence. At the same time, it’s important to understand that not every false statement of fact can be considered a fraudulent act however the statement must be considered a material fact.
3.
The reason it is difficult for criminologists to define White Collar Crime and Organized crime is the challenge of proving the intent of the crime. Intent is the biggest factor when determining was law is broken. For example, someone hits a pedestrian on the sidewalk while driving to work. The difference between this being a crime or an accident is all about the intent of the driver. If the driver had been drinking, and ran over the pedestrian then I would charge the driver with Vehicular Manslaughter. If the driver was mad, and wanting to inflict harm on any one, than their intent was to hit someone with their car. I would charge the driver with attempted murder. If the driver lost control of the car, and hit the pedestrian on the sidewalk, I would rule this as an accident. The driver’s intent is what decides was law was broken, if any. White Collar Crime and Organized Crime are defined using the same logic.
The legal implications of both type of crimes in a formal and informal social control would be easy to describe by looking at Local Law Enforcement. In recent years, local Law Enforcement has recieved so much scrutiny for the way they treat people who are going to be arrested. This social control influenced Cops all around the country to start wearing Body Cams in order to protect the people they were arresting and to ensure the Cops were making the right decisions. Other forms of Social Control would be the Federal Government and the times where their surveillance was scrutinized for invading the privacy of citizens. This has effected businesses such as Facebook or Snapchat to make their services unavailable to these agencies.
The challenges that are encountered from Law Enforcement and prosecutors is proving the crime was committed. For example, in order to catch a drug dealer the cop or agent would have to follow the drugs or the money back to where it came from. For the most part, this is an easy thing to do compared to White Collar Crimes. With White Collar crimes, there is no victim calling the police to report the crime. There is no breadcrumbs to follow. In order to catch the perpetrator in the act takes weeks, months or years to build the case of all of the small things the person has committed. Look at insider trading for example. The business is doing well, and from the outside looking in, its a business (it is supposed to do well). However, there is a time where the business sold stocks in a company right before that company had to report they had a bad quarter. Now the Agent has to find the evidence to prove that the company had information before the public was made aware of the poor report. This is like finding a needle in a haystack and the Agents face this battle with almost every case in White Collar Crime.
4.
Criminologists have a hard time defining white collar and organized crime because of each of their individual complexities. Proving a person benefitted from these crimes, figuring out how to prosecute and charge them, and the longevity of these cases are all contributing factors to the difficulty in putting one exact definition to these words. Since white-collar crimes often involve people that are already wealthy, the question must be made, did they truly believe or know that they were breaking the law? It is next to impossible to decipher a person’s intentions, if they do not think that they did anything wrong or illegal. Each of these crimes have multiple offenses that could fit under their definitions. Also,throughout the varying of cultures, different stereotypes are going to have different views in what is and is not accepted. Another factor that makes describing these crimes difficult is the idea of a government gridlock. If the prosecutors, judge, defense, and all others involvedhave different ideas on what is illegal, and that makes agreeing on a definition hard to do. Additionally, with all of the changes to technology and intelligence, these crimes extend far pass our country‘s borders in this day and age. The span of geographical areas only adds to the hardships of proving these crimes. “A definition of white-collar crime acceptable to all groups is yet to be developed. This is troublesome for at least five reasons. First, the lack of a sound definition of white-collar crime has hindered detection efforts. Second, without a concrete definition of white-collar crime, the most effective responses to the problem cannot be gauged. Third, varying definitions among researchers have made it difficult to draw comparisons between different white-collar crime studies. Fourth, vague conceptualizations have made it more difficult to identify the causes of the behavior. Finally, varied definitions of white-collar crime have made it difficult to determine with great accuracy the true extent of white-collar crime.” (Payne, 2017) Thoughthe evolution of white-collar and organized crime has made it extremely difficult to create one definition, criminologists and criminal justice professionals know that these crimes have got to be prevented, ideally before they get to trial.
Assess the legal implications of both types of crimes in the context of formal and informal social control
Informal and formal social control refers to a person’s socialization and the expectations required in that specific society. Formal control usually refers to agents, police, and criminal justice professionals who execute that the expected rules are abided by. Informal social control refers to how a person is expected to behave in correlation to their peers and fellow citizens in that society. The legal implications for white collar crimes are usually based on a minimum sentence protocol. Because these people are usually wealthy people who have never had any previous run ins with the law. These white-collar criminals risk their reputation when on a trial stand, most recently the public has taken notice to ‘famous people,’ who have gotten caught committing these crimes. This would change how the informal social control views them and their actions. Some people believe these high-profile cases are a contributing factor to a minimum sentence, as maybe there are getting a break because of their fame or wealth. While both white collar and organized criminals can face jail time and harsher charges, the sentencing and determining of a fair consequenceis another reason these crimes are so hard to define when applying to each situation. Informal social control would make it difficult for a convicted criminal to get a new job or find employment at all. And a formal social control could be as serious as to threaten removal of the country to an immigrant. Whether one is viewed by their peers or the law, it can be an inconvenience to anyone’s life.
Explore challenges encountered by law enforcement and prosecutors in the prosecution of white collar and organized crime offenders
Many challenges come with white collar and organized crime cases. In white collar crime, it is sometimes difficult to understand why already wealthy people would commit these crimes and jeopardize their job. A big hurdle in these cases is the person or company’s intention. Did they know that they were doing something illegal, even if it was typical behavior in this job field? And a challenge with corporations and companies would be figuring out exactly who to punish and what is a fitting consequence. Because of the multiple people involved, it is hard to pinpoint who is at fault. In competitive businesses that deal with millions of dollars, sometimes this behavior can be seen as common, and in a sense, accepted. Punishing an entire company would merely shut the business down. “Drawing these fine lines around intention is even trickier when executives rely on expert advisers to help with their decisions. If a lawyer or an accountant tells you that something is legal—even just barely—should you have to go to jail if he’s wrong? Many things that appear greedy or selfish in hindsight are not illegal, and many actual crimes occur when valid business practices edge beyond what the law allows.” (Olejarz, 2016)