White Collar Crime

Assignment #1

1. What are the relationship between trust, respectability, risk, and white collar crime, and

how do these relationships differ when the crime involved is conventional, rather than

white collar?

Trust, in this sense of the word is merely a notion that the other party will act

accordingly and honor whatever duty was previously set forth as an expectation. Trust is

something that is an element in relationships individually and within a corporation or other

business arrangements. Respectability, by definition is, “worthy of esteem, proper, of good

standing”. All terms that can be closely associated with the word trust,as well. Respectability

has always been a term closely related to white collar crime, because white collar crime has

always been closely associated with those of the “upper class’, or “of esteem”. Risk , in relation

to white collar crime is the conceivability of the chances of less than favorable consequences,

whether that assessment may be to the cost of being caught proceeding with less than

favorable behavior in corporate decision making, or the mere factor of the moral risk of

irresponsible, reprehensible decisions regarding the trust that others have afforded to you.

These relationships differ greatly in the sense of conventional crime, merely for the fact that

conventional crime is generally considered more violent, and or physical. Generally speaking,

victims of conventional crime do not necessarily have an underlying trust or respectability for

those who perpetrate against them. There is no foundation of a trusting relationship, and

demographically speaking, the risk in conventional crime differs on many levels. Usually when a

conventional crime is committed, it is not of an elite class of people whom are generally highly

educated, that you have put your trust with your future in. These crimes are generally

committed by lower class, less fortunate people, whom you have a suspecting knowledge, are

capable of committing such offenses. In other words, by societal statistics, is suspected of

them, or even expected of them to commit the crime, whereas in white collar crime, it seems

premeditated, seeing as how the perpetrator relies on the trust of the victim in order to

successfully have the tools to commit the crime.

2. How would you define white collar crime?

White collar crime is essentially a perpetration against society as a whole. It involves

people in a position of trust, and respectability that are using their position of high social status,

or education for personal gain or corporate or organizational interest. These are usually

people in a position in normal, legitimate occupational dealings, that are in direct violation of

fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities to those