White Collar Crime and the Class-Race-Gender Construct (From Race, Gender, and Class in Criminology: The Intersection, P 141-158, 1996, Martin D Schwartz and Dragan Milovanovic, eds. -- See NCJ-164529)

• NCJ Number: 164537
• Author(s): D O Friedrichs
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 18 pages
• Sale Source: Garland Publishing, Inc.
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter examines some of the issues that arise in the intersection of white collar crime with class, race, and gender.

Abstract

Any serious survey of the evidence on white collar crime offenders lends strong support to the proposition that the class- race-gender construct structures criminal opportunities and shapes criminal behavior. Class-advantaged white males in particular are uniquely situated to take advantage of an extraordinary range of opportunities to commit the most substantial forms of corporate and occupational crime. Conversely, class-disadvantaged nonwhite females are unlikely to be so situated. Some criminologists have argued that the advantaged have stronger deviant motivations, enjoy greater deviant opportunities, and are subject to weaker social controls than the disadvantaged and the powerless. Anthony Harris (1991) has suggested that upper-class whites and underclass blacks may well have in common a pronounced lack of fear about committing crime, in the one case due to a sense of immunity and in the other a relative indifference to the consequences. The victims of white-collar crime, particularly that which produces hazardous products and corporate practices, are often minorities, women, and the poor. 51 references