Week 3: White Collar Crime
For your opening post, answer ONE of the following questions. Your first post is due by WEDNESDAY. Include any lingering questions you have about the white collar crime readings and lecture or include a question for your peers, to help them think through the material more deeply. Cite your sources, please! Students lose points for not citing their sources. It is very important to cite at graduate level. Your work is not opinion; your writing/work comes from empirical and other academic sources. Personal experiences are permitted, as long as you answer the question prompts.
Your post should relate directly to the readings and lecture about white collar crime. Cite your sources – points will be deducted for missing sources in your peer reply. Please adhere to APA within your peer posts.
1. Why do you think white-collar crime research was largely ignored until the 1960s and 1970s? Why is it that some of the traditional theories of crime cannot explain white-collar crime? Do you think white-collar crime is less or more serious than traditional street crime? Why? Why do you think white-collar crime was largely hidden from society for so many years? Make an argument, provide evidence, cite your sources.
2. How would you study white-collar crime? Do you believe it is easier to study white-collar crime now or in the past? Why? Explain why white-collar crime has damaging social costs and physical costs. Why do these costs often outnumber the costs of traditional street crime? Make an argument, provide evidence, cite your sources.
3.How did white-collar crime call into question traditional theories of crime? Explain how the traditional theories could not explain white-collar crime. Are there any traditional theories that can be used to explain white-collar crime? Explain. Make an argument, provide evidence, cite your sources.
4. Explain how corporations normalize deviance. What are some reasons that corporations may be organized in a criminal manner? How does the workplace present offenders with many criminal opportunities? Give examples of these opportunities. Describe lure. Give examples. Why is it so prevalent in the corporate world? What policy implications could come out of Shover and Hochstetler’s work concerning lure? Make an argument, provide evidence, cite your sources.
5.How do white-collar offenders deny their guilty minds? Do you think this applies to street criminals? Why or why not? Why do you think accounts are shaped by the type of crime committed? Make an argument, provide evidence, cite your sources.
6.Which of the theories presented do you think does the best job at explaining white-collar crime? Why? Could these theories be integrated? Explain how. Why do you think state oversight of white-collar crime is not effective? How could you make it more effective? How would you try to prevent white-collar crime? Do you think this is an easier or harder task than preventing traditional street crime? Explain. Make an argument, provide evidence, cite your sources.
7.Using Shover and Hochstetler’s work as a guide, describe how your college campus or your workplace presents lure(s). Thoroughly explain your response. What policy could help deter this kind of behavior? Make an argument, provide evidence, cite your sources.
