White Collar Crime

The methodology that provides a concrete, rich understanding of the dynamics and realities of a particular white collar crime case is the __________.

Case study

A principal value of the experimental method is its ___________.

Control

The following term is not generally used to refer to white collar crime:

Conventional crime

Which of the following is not linked with white collar crime?

Correct Public Order Crime

The earliest proto-corporations or "trusts" were ___________.

Correct churches, towns and universities

The book White Collar Crime by Sutherland focused on the crimes of ___________.

Correct corporations

Garfinkel called the circumstances under which people are stripped of status and respectability:

Correct degradation ceremonies

Sutherland's general theory of crime is known as ________.

Correct differential association theory

Friedrich's multistage approach to defining white collar crime consists of the following stages:

Correct polemical, typological, and operational

Holding a legitimate position or occupation is most closely associated with a _________ meaning of respectability.

Correct status-related

The primary victims as well as the context in which a crime occurs are criteria in which stage of Friedrichs' multistage approach to defining white collar crime?

Correct typological

Trusted Criminals

Criminals, including white collar criminals, whose crimes involve a breach of the trust bestowed on them because of their seeming respectability.

Contemporary "paper entrepreneurs" are associated with all but which of the following?

Decline of investment return for corporate stockholders

Adam Smith, the principal philosophical advocate of capitalism, believed that merchants and manufacturers were best qualified to rule mankind.

False

Because of the difficulties associated with researching the Revco Medicaid fraud case, Diane Vaughan decided not to investigate the explosion of the Challenger.

False

Because they operate internationally, transnational corporations have had to comply with higher standards than companies who operate only on American soil.

False

In more recent years the unit of analysis in the study of white collar crime has increasingly shifted from the organization to the individual.

False

It is generally easier to obtain research funding for studies of elite deviance than for studies of juvenile delinquency.

False

It is impossible to compel powerful people and institutions to cooperate with a white collar crime research project.

False

It is rare for studies of white collar crime to use a mixture of different methods.

False

Nobody before E. H. Sutherland had recognized that the rich and the affluent commit serious crimes in connection with their business activity.

False

Objectivity is rarely an issue in white collar crime research because researchers are not white collar criminals.

False

Recognition of the risk of being victimized by white collar crime appears to be diminishing

False

Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie became rich because their products and ways of doing business were superior to their competitors.'

False

Sutherland found that corporations were typically one-time offenders, rather than repeat offenders

False

The concept of the "socialization of risk" refers to the notion of allowing the public sector to profit while the private sector absorbs risks.

False

The humanistic approach to studying white collar crime assumes that the subject can be studied "scientifically."

False

The publication of Sutherland's White Collar Crime in 1949 led very quickly to a large upsurge of research on such crime

False

White collar crime is a sociological phenomenon, and accordingly other disciplines have little to contribute to our understanding of it.

False

Informers (Informants)

Important agents in exposing white collar crime, in which they are involved to varying degrees; they provide criminal justice personnel with critical information used to convict white collar criminals, often in exchange for payment or special treatment.

Which of the following does not pertain to the concept of social harm, broadly defined?

More recently, criminal law has begun to account for social harm.

Large corporations are best positioned to maximize profits with harmful corporate practices in ______.

Third World countries

Which of the following is not an example of secondary data?

Transcript records of a researcher's interviews with convicted white collar offenders.

According to Sutherland, businessmen were often contemptuous of the laws governing their business activities, and did not suffer a loss of status if convicted of business-related offenses.

True

Conventional offenders have tended to be more accessible to researchers than white collar offenders.

True

Corporate crime is both a major form of white collar crime and a specific form of organizational crime.

True

Corporate crime was the primary focus of Sutherland's famous 1949 book, White Collar Crime.

True

Corporate takeovers are not illegal, but are regarded as harmful by some commentators.

True

Corporate violence differs from conventional violence in that corporate violence is not specifically intended.

True

Corporate violence typically results from the decisions or actions of a large number of people acting collectively, rather than from the actions of isolated individuals.

True

Corporations have been accused of putting more emphasis on profit than on the safety of workers, customers, and citizens, in their analysis of risk.

True

Journalistic reports of white collar crime can generate hypotheses for further, more systematic study.

True

Mark Dowie's "Pinto Madness," originally published in Mother Jones in 1977, was a journalistic report that exposed a significant example of corporate misconduct.

True

Nineteenth-century American corporations were largely invulnerable to legal controls.

True

Police departments report conventional crimes to the FBI, but do not systematically tabulate or report white collar crimes.

True

Sutherland's definition of white collar crime emphasized the respectability and relatively high status of those who commit it.

True

The field of criminology historically has focused on conventional forms of harm, such as homicide, rape, assult, burglary, robbery, theft and the like.

True

The probability or risk of being prosecuted for any given white collar crime has traditionally been regarded as low.

True

The terms "white collar crime" and "elite deviance" have been used to refer to the same thing.

True

The violation of trust is not necessarily exclusive to white collar crimes.

True

Criminaloid

a businessman who commits exploitative, sometimes illegal, acts in order to maximize profit, while hiding behind a façade of respectability and piety.

Degradation Ceremony

a ceremony such as a criminal trial, conviction, or formal expulsion that strips someone of status and respectability.

Tracey & Fox's study of fraudulent claims to insurance companies submitted by autobody repair shops is an example of:

a field experiment

The South Sea Bubble Act (1720) was inspired by ____________.

a fraudulent trading company

Normal Accident

a term coined by Charles Perrow, referring to the accidents that complex modern technological systems inevitably produce.

White Collar Crime

a term formally introduced by Edwin H. Sutherland in 1939 in reference to "crime in the upper or white-collar class" involving "violation of delegated or implied trust"; the term has since been applied broadly, and no general consensus has been reached as to definition.

Large corporations are least likely to be associated with:

aiding and abetting revolutionary movements

To obtain the cooperation of an organization such as a corporation in a research project on corporate crime, the research proposal must generally:

all of the above

Elite Deviance

an academic term for crimes committed by corporate and political leaders and other members of the elite.

In 2008, American taxpayers were effectively bailing out financial corporations that had lost _________ of dollars on subprime mortgages.

billions

Surveys would be least helpful in the study of:

characteristics of corporations convicted of white collar offenses

A combination of centrally owned firms operating in different fields is known as a(n) ______.

conglomerate

Businessmen who committed exploitative acts were labeled ____________ by E. A. Ross in Sin and Society.

criminaloids

Respectable Criminals

criminals, including white collar criminals, whose crimes are concealed or facilitated by their apparent respectability.

Muckrakers

early 20th-century journalists, such as Lincoln Steffens, who established the revelation of high-level wrongdoing as a legitimate journalistic enterprise.

The methodology that has been least readily applied to the study of white collar crime is the ________.

experiment

Since the 1970s, the unit of analysis in white collar crime studies has increasingly shifted from the _________.

individual to the organization

Whistleblowers

insiders who are not themselves involved in illegal activity, but who inform outside agencies or raise alarms internally about white collar crime.

Which of the following did not become more common in the 20th century?

monopolies

The domination of a market by several large corporations is known as a(n) ____________.

oligopoly

The results of Milgram's experiment on authority suggested that _______.

ordinary people will do something harmful or unethical if ordered to do so by legitimate authority

The 19th century "robber barons" built up great fortunes by engaging in all but which of the following practices?

progressive labor contracts

The factor least likely to be involved in interviewing powerful people is

regional identity

Marx and Engels accused capitalist corporations of all but which of the following?

sponsoring mindless entertainment directed at workers

The rise of the Standard Oil Company partly inspired ___________.

the Sherman Antitrust Act

Investigative Reporting

the brand of politically-tinged muckraking that was revived in the 1970s.

Which of the following is not a limitation of "journalistic" research on white collar crime?

the inability of journalists to collect and analyze data

The positivistic approach to the study of white collar crime is associated with ________.

the use of the scientific method

Which of the following is not an example of white collar crime, broadly defined?

A lawyer who commits a hold-up at a bank.

• Risk Society

A society in which the calculation of risk, including that of being caught for committing a crime, has become commonplace.

What percentage of the U.S. population owns about half of the outstanding stock and trust equity in the United States and two-thirds of its financial securities?

1%

A general consensus has been reached on the definition of white collar crime.

False

A positive view of corporations is widespread.

False

The individual credited with having first coined the term "white collar crime" is

E. H. Sutherland

A clear recognition that capitalist corporations can be harmful emerged only in the 20th century.

False

Problems of ______ may be intensified in the study of white collar crime if researchers are drawn to the field by moral outrage.

Objectivity

Which of the following is not an attribute of white collar crimes?

Offenders engage in direct forms of violence.