Practitioner fraud and abuse in medical benefit programs: government regulation and professional white-collar crime

Physicians who defraud and abuse medical benefit programs provide a unique group of lawbreakers for scientific study. They could be considered to epitomize white collar criminals given their exceedingly high socioeconomic status and power as a professional group. Using official reports and documents, as well as interviews with enforcement and program personnel at both state and federal levels, this study examines the problem of physician fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid. Major areas relevant to understanding this phenomenon and its control are presented and policy implications of present knowledge in the area are discussed.     

Transnational white-collar crime and risk

Research Summary Business transactions have increasingly been crossing national borders, thereby presenting greater opportunities for white-collar crime and for the externalization of risk. The global economic crisis, resulting in part from the subprime mortgage scandal, is a prime example of this potential. To develop theoretical perspectives and practical interventions to prevent and respond to the global financial crisis, we consider similar issues of risk and white-collar crime associated with global transactions in electronic waste (E-waste). Policy Implications Smart (or responsive) regulation is a promising approach for addressing both E-waste and the current economic crisis. This response includes crime prevention, third-party- and self-regulation, and the threat of strong state intervention. Future research should explore the extent to which smart regulation reduces specific forms of white-collar crime and risk, as well as whether these interventions generalize to other transnational problems.     

Public perceptions of white-collar crime and punishment

Although financial losses from white-collar crime continue to exceed those of street crime, the criminal justice system has traditionally focused on the latter. Past research suggested that citizens are more likely to support punitive sanctions for street offenders than white-collar offenders. Recent corporate scandals have increased public awareness of white-collar crime, but whether public attitudes have been altered remains to be determined. Using a 2005 national sample of 402 telephone survey participants, the current study examined citizen perceptions of white-collar and street crime, as well as attitudes regarding apprehension and punishment. This research extended prior studies by also considering the influence of sociodemographic characteristics as well as perceptions of white-collar crime and punishment on the public's support for increasing resource allocation. Implications for future research and development of more effective white-collar crime control policy are discussed.     

Dramaturgical self-efficacy and opportunity structures for white-collar crime

Crime, Law and Social Change - Perceived self-efficacy is often held to be the most focal mechanism of human agency. It has shown strong potential to explain action in multiple areas highly...     

Public support for punishing white-collar crime: Blaming the victim revisited?

It is commonly asserted that white-collar crime flourishes because the public is unaware of its costs and indifferent to its control. Survey data collected in Illinois indicate, however, that the public perceives white-collar offenses to have greater economic and moral costs than conventional street crimes, though not to be as violent. More notably, our sample displayed strong support for the criminal sanctioning of white-collar offenders. Public attitudes thus do not appear to be either a major obstacle to attacking upper-world criminality, or its source. It is suggested that attempts to blame the public for its immense victimization serve only to divert attention from the real structural conditions that underlie both high rates of white-collar crime and the reluctance of the state to bring the lawlessness of the advantaged within the reach of the criminal law.     

From deuteronomy to deniability: A historical perlustration on white-collar crime

The history of social efforts to deal with offenses now categorized as white-collar crime shows a struggle for justice and equity with roots deep in the past. This paper uses a triad of English marketing offenses—forestalling, regrating, and engrossing—to epitomize the legal background of efforts to control the abuse of commercial power. The paper notes the spurious ancestry of the doctrine of caveat emptor, and offers explanations for the decline and the subsequent revival of crusades against the exploitation of consumers by business forces. Scholarly work on white-collar crime is placed in this historical context, followed by a general appraisal of the nature of changes over time—from the dire biblical prophecies in Deuteronomy to the bland explanations of “plausible deniability” during the recent Iran-Contra hearings before the U.S. Congress.     

Organizational convenience for white-collar crime: opportunity expansion by offender behavior

The theory of convenience suggests that the extent of white-collar crime is dependent on financial motive, organizational opportunity, and willingness for deviant behavior. Organizational opportunity is at the core of convenience theory, where privileged and powerful offenders have legitimate access to resources in their professions to commit and conceal financial crime. This article introduces a dynamic perspective of organizational opportunity where a white-collar offender can cause opportunity expansion over time. Based on agency theory, social disorganization theory, and blame game theory, a case study is presented. The case study is concerned with a chief financial officer (CFO) who applied several opportunity expansion techniques before he conveniently was able to commit and conceal embezzlement in the business where he was employed.     

Assessing the validity of white-collar crime definitions using experimental survey data

Journal of Experimental Criminology - We examine the extent to which the characteristics of offenders, the circumstance of offending, and offense characteristics affect public willingness to label...     

Exploring white-collar crime and the American dream: A partial test of institutional anomie theory

Institutional anomie theory (IAT) suggests that high crime rates in America can be attributed to the commitment to the goal of material success. In this regard, particular emphasis is placed on the motivations derived from the profit goal of economic institutions that dominate the American culture. To date, IAT was only applied to property and violent crime. This study used Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and Census Bureau data to examine the applicability of IAT to a form of white-collar crime, embezzlement, as defined by the UCR. Results provided mixed support for IAT. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.     

Can general strain theory explain white-collar crime? A preliminary investigation of the relationship between strain and select white-collar offenses

Agnew's (1992) general strain theory (GST) had been tested across a wide range of populations and on numerous criminal and analogous behaviors. The ability of GST to predict white-collar offending, however, had yet to be explored. Using data from convicted white-collar offenders, this research examined the ability of GST to explain white-collar offenses. The results revealed that GST was useful for predicting a select group of white-collar offenses, but might not be generalizable to individuals committing corporate-type crimes. Additionally, the findings suggested that the types of strain and negative emotion at work for white-collar offenders might vary from those found in other criminal populations. Implications for white-collar crime studies are discussed and ideas for future research are presented.     

Deciding to prosecute white-collar crime: A national survey of state attorneys general

In the past decade, academic research on white-collar crime has reemerged. Most of this inquiry has focused on three general issues: (1) public attitudes toward the seriousness of white-collar crime; (2) the use of government sanctions to control white-collar crime; (3) the differential and often beneficial treatment afforded white-collar criminals in comparison to traditional offenders. Little of this research has examined the prosecutorial link between occurrences of white-collar crime and the imposition of sanctions on white-collar offenders. In this study, an attempt to focus on the link that exists at the level of state attorneys general, a survey of the 50 state attorneys general was conducted. The results suggest the following: (1) state attorneys general prefer to use criminal sanctions, but use them most in cases involving individuals; (2) when organizations are involved in white-collar criminality, civil intervention is preferred; (3) the most crucial factor in the decision to prosecute and investigate white-collar crime is the seriousness of the offense; (4) the least important factors in the decision to investigate and prosecute white-collar violations are publicity aspects and political considerations; (5) state attorneys general may play an important part in the prosecution of white-collar crime because of the limited resources available in most local prosecutors' offices.     

Legitimating war by victimization: state-corporate crime and public opinion

This article argues that the ideological use of victimization helps legitimate the state-corporate crime of aggressive war. This contributes to the emerging criminology of war by offering a theoretical framework to better understand how state and corporate actors legitimate criminal military action. We argue that politicians and other elite figures promote a sense of national victimization that is amplified by the news media. We partially test our theory by measuring the association between the incidence of terror victimization ideas in the news and public support for the U.S. ??war on terror.?? We find some evidence of relationships between our Terrorism Victimization Index and both victimization worry and aggressive war support.     

Modernisation and clean government: Tackling crime, corruption and organised crime in modern Taiwan

Taiwan's formal title is the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan because it is the continuation of the government of mainland China that fled to Taiwan in 1949 and has survived there ever since. The rulting party in the ROC is the Kuomintang (KMT, the Nationalist Party of China). The ROC government on the mainland was plagued with problems of corruption at almost all levels, while the regime on Taiwan successfully reinvented itself and oversaw a remarkable economic transformation of that island. This article considered the ROC's corruption problems on the mainland and attempts to explain why these problem shave proved to be so intractable. Corruption played a major part in undermining the Kuomintang's rule on the Chinese mainland. Once the ROC moved its seat of government to Taiwan in 1949, it was forced to take a very different approach to crime and corruption. The next section deals with the evolution of the KMT on Taiwan while the final part of the discussion looks at the problem of organised crime on the island. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Perception of white-collar crime among immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel

This study examines how immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) who have lived in Israel for an average of 10 years perceive white-collar crime. After a survey of the literature about the Soviet economy and how Soviet society regarded white-collar crime, we examine the relationship between FSU immigrants’ tolerance of white-collar crime (relative to their Israeli counterparts) and the degree of their involvement in Russian culture and society. This involvement was analyzed using a system of variables that indicate the subjects’ affinity for Russian culture and society and rejection of (isolation from) Israeli society. The study’s 1,028 participants are a representative sample of the olim (immigrants to Israel) from the FSU between 1990 and 2005. Our findings reinforced the hypothesis that the more involved these immigrants are in Russian culture and society, and the more alienated they are from Israeli society, the more permissive their view of white-collar crime. Nonetheless, our study explains 27 % of the variance in their view of white-collar crime. Hence the question requires further research. Our findings are discussed in terms of the decisive impact of the Soviet process of socialization on the values, perspectives, and behavior patterns of Post-Soviet man and its ramifications for the rule of law and their conception of Israeli democracy.     

Regulatory justice: A re-examination of the influence of class position on the punishment of white-collar crime

The issue of class bias in response to white-collar crime offenders remains unresolved because of data limitations, research design problems, and debates over the conceptualization of core factors. One problem is that previous research failed to consider the full range of legal actions that can be taken against a violator of regulatory law; it typically focuses only on criminal sanctioning when addressing the issue of bias. Recent data on formal actions taken against federal securities offenders were used to reconsider the issue of bias. This analysis, however, examined the entire range of legal actions taken against offenders—civil, administrative, and criminal. I used a logistic regression analysis to determine the sampled offenders' likelihood of receiving a punitive sanction. Both principals and “contrepreneurs” were significantly less likely to receive a punitive response than managers and other legitimate actors in the workplace. Securities professionals (other than principals) were particularly vulnerable to punitive sanctions if they were affiliated with larger firms in the industry, as opposed to smaller firms. These findings suggest that the relationship between class and the punishment of white-collar offending is more complex than suggested previously.     

Intellectual property and white-collar crime: report of issues,trends, and problems for future research

This research examines the association between intellectual property (IP) and whitecollar crime (WCC), and identifies future research that might benefit policymakers; federal, state, and local agencies; and the general public. Research methods include a review of literature, a review of information and data in IPR violations and WCC, and inquiry in areas that directly deal with IP laws and enforcement practices, such as law enforcement agencies, IP-based industries and private law firms.