Necessity is not always the motive behind the commission of a crime. This idea evolved with the Criminologist and Sociologist Edwin H. Sutherland, in the year 1939, who popularised the term ‘white collar crimes’ by defining such a crime as one “committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” Sutherland also included crimes committed by corporations and other legal entities within his definition.
Sutherland’s study of white collar crime was prompted by the view that criminology had incorrectly focused on social and economic determinants of crime, such as family background and level of wealth. Sutherland was of a view that, crime is committed at every level of society and by persons of widely divergent socio-economic backgrounds. In particular, according to Sutherland, crime is often committed by persons operating through large and powerful organizations. White collar crime, as Sutherland concluded, has a greatly underestimated impact upon our society.
It is true to the common knowledge that there are certain professions which offer lucrative opportunities for criminal acts and unethical practises which is very often overlooked by the general mass of the society. There have been crooks and unethical persons in business, various other professions, who tend to become unscrupulous because of no reason apart from the thirst of gaining more and more for themselves. These deviants have least regard for ethical and moral human values. Therefore, they carry on their illegal activities with impunity without the fear of loss of respect and prestige. These crimes are of the nature of ‘white collar crimes’ which is the essential outcome of the development of the competent economy of the twenty-first century. Talking about the prevalence of white collar crimes in India, they are spreading like a rapid fire in every sphere of society. Though corruption, one of the species of white collar crimes, has been the most talked about issue in all spheres-social, economic and political, not much has stringent actions had been taken to curb these menace.
Therefore the concern of this project is to define white collar crime, study its historical development and formulate tentative solutions for eradicating the problem.
Defining White collar Crimes:-
As has been mentioned earlier, Sutherland defined white collar crime as “crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” A white collar criminal therefore is a socially and economically sound person who violates the criminal laws in due course of his performing professional qualities. Misrepresentation through fraudulent advertisements, infringement of trademark, copyrights by the industrialists, hoarding, black-marketing, food adulteration etc. are considered to be some of the instances of white collar crimes. However the definition given by Sutherland is considered to be wide and imprecise and therefore it is subjected to vehement criticisms in all quarters. It is wide in the sense that he did not define since he does not specifically mentions what he means by a person of respectability, nor does he describes the scope and ambit of the term ‘occupation’. Coleman and Moynihan pointed out that the lack of definite criteria for determining who are the ‘persons of respectability and status’ has made Sutherland’s definition of crime the most controversial. The term ‘high social status’ as used in the definition also leads to discrepancy since the term is a relative one and therefore not specific. As mentioned earlier, the ‘occupation’ term used in his definition, leads to ambiguity as he does not categorise what occupation should come within its ambit. Another criticism put up against Sutherland’s definition is that white collar crimes, in the general sense of term, also includes those violations which are not committed in the course of occupation or profession and at the same time, white collar crimes are not strictly committed by the members of the higher socio-economic strata. For e.g. the white collar crime of tax-evasion is not only committed only by persons belonging to the higher strata but also committed by persons belonging to middle or even lower strata of the society.
However, it was not only Sutherland, but many others who preferred to define white collar crimes on the status basis. Hartung defines a white-collar offense as a violation of law regulating business, which is committed for a firm by the firm or its agents in the conduct of its business.” Cressey seems implicitly to be using a wider concept in accordance with Suth- erland’s explicit definition-a concept broad enough to include also embezzlement. Moreover there are some who argue that differentials of power and influence are the keys to identify, satisfactorily frame, and unravel fundamental questions about crime and crime control. For example, investigations of sexual harassment have shown there the offender has always been of a superior status than that of the victim. Therefore the principle reason propounded behind the commission of a white collar crime is that of greed and arrogance and not of necessity or any compulsion. White collar crimes throw light on the diverse criminal behaviour generally. The status-based definition of white collar crime draws on and reaffirms criminological ties to macro level analyses of social and political processes.
However, there are others who refuse to give much emphasis on offender’s social position and repute as the only basis of classifying white collar crimes. They advocate that collaring should be done not of the criminals but of the crimes. The concept of abuse of trust, for example, can be considered to be a white collar crime. Abuse of trust means exploitation of fiduciary position of the agent responsible for the safe custody, discretion, information or for property rights. Here since the trust crime is being committed by citizens wearing both blue collars and white collars. Similar instance can be done as that of adulteration of food, where this type of offence is committed not only by the upper class people but also by middle class businessmen involved in the food business. Therefore we should not always peep into the offender’s wardrobe and his official position but consider the modus operandi of his misdeeds and the ways he exploit. Whatever the merits of the position, they hold strong that in white collar crimes the offenders are not always powerful and the victims are ordinary citizens.
Therefore, Sutherland’s restriction of white-collar crime to acts committed by men/women in the course of their operation, excludes extra vocational crime. Whereas some other views refused to restrict themselves within the circumference of the elite class and tried to go deep into it. However, whatever definitions have been offered, it failed to acquire general acceptance as it did not seem to be adequate. Despite of its fundamental awkwardness, the term “white collar crime” has now been deeply embedded within our legal, moral, and social science vocabularies. The term persists and proliferates not so much in spite of its lack of definitional precision, but because of it speakers attribute to it those meanings that correspond to their own particular analytical or ideological concerns.
Not surprisingly, this is the approach taken by various lawyers and law enforcement officials interested in formulating a standard definition of white collar crime. For example, in 1970, U.S. Department of Justice official Herbert Edlehertz described white collar crime as “an illegal act or series of illegal acts committed by nonphysical means and by concealment or guile, to obtain money or property, or to obtain business advantage.”Therefore in his definition he made an attempt to shed out the tag of person of high social respectability from the concept of white collar crime and tried to concise its definition concentrating solely on the nature of acts that constitutes white collar crimes.
Should acts termed as “White Collar Crimes” be really considered as crimes?
Apart from the basic uncertainties about what can be tentative definition of the term white collar crime, there are also a long-standing doubts whether or not all the misbehaviours discussed under this rubric can be counted as crime or not. A stimulus is generated on this topic due to the fact that it appears to balance the critical boundary between the criminal and non-criminal behaviour. It has been argued by many scholars that the criteria of misbehaviours propounded by Sutherland and taken forward by his followers do not always satisfy the idea of crime. Some even has to go to that extent of explaining the necessity of criminal proceeding for penalising the white collar criminals. The reason behind is that some others have made virtually an opposite attack saying that white collar crimes are merely technically criminal and therefore they should not be considered to be at par with the ordinary social crimes. This opposite criticism of the definition of white collar crime has risen due to the prevailing ambiguity over the subject. Sutherland, along with many other scholars in the later period, chose to include with the definition of white collar crimes, not only the misbehaviours with criminal penalties, but also wanted to put civil actions. This was done generally so as to justify lighter sanctions. However, Sutherland later defended the acts which come within the purview of white collar crimes to be criminal offences arguing on the element of intention present while the act is so committed. So going by this contention a pertinent question that arises is whether acts considered to be white collar crimes can be treated as crimes in the real sense of term. Tappan (1947) offers the most exclusive legal definition of crime: those acts which result in a criminal conviction. Most contemporary criminologists espouse a legal definition of crime, but extend this definition to include any activity that violates the criminal code, regardless of disposition (Jeffrey, 1956). While most criminologists do not require a criminal conviction, they do not include white-collar violations of the criminal code that are adjudicated as torts. Yet certain questions, still remains unanswered. Should definition of crime adopted for sociological purposes are same as that of law or not. Certain legal scholars are of the view to refer it to law otherwise discrepancies may arise to decide who is to judge the count of business deviance. But this was exactly the decision that the labelling perspective tried to force criminologists to face. Therefore the concept of white collar crime illustrates the possibility of divergence among legal, social and political definition of criminality.
Thus concentrating on the legal position, explicit or implicit, that white-collar offenses should not be considered as crimes because they are most often treated as violations of the civil law assumes that there is some fundamental difference between civil and criminal violations. This is not necessarily the case. There is an enormous overlap between criminal and civil law in terms of their rules of liability, moral judgments they imply about behaviours, purposes. The argument is that the distinction between white-collar offenses and criminal offenses is primarily procedural rather than behavioural. Therefore to conclude it can be said that while the legal treatment of some acts as crimes and others as civil violations (torts and regulatory violations) is itself worthy of sociological study, this difference in the definition of illegal behaviour should not be accepted uncritically, as it has been in the past.
Historical background of the emergence of white collar crimes:-
The earliest documented case of white-collar crime law dates back to 15th century England. There has been a case popularly known as the Carrier’s case of 1473, where the agent was entrusted to transport wool and he attempted to steal some of it for him. Therefore the Star Chamber and Exchequer Chamberof the English Court of Law adopted the ‘breaking bulk’ doctrine as it constituted the crime of larceny.
However, the growth of industrial capitalism in the eighteenth century ushered a new history of crime and criminality. The very base of industrial capitalism is based on coercion and robbery. Now, before we discuss the topic let us understand the meaning of capitalism. In the words of V.L. Lenin, “Capitalism is the name given to the social system under which the land, factories, implements, etc. belong to a small number of landed proprietors and capitalists, while the mass of a people possess no property or very little property and are compelled to hire themselves out as workers. The land owners and factory owners hire workers and make them produce wires of different kind which they sell on the market. The factory owners furthermore, pay the workers only such a wage as provides a bare subsistence for them and their families, while everything that the worker produces over and above these amount goes to the factory owner’s pocket as his profit.”
Therefore, it can be derived from the definition is that, since there has been nothing to the major mass of the society except their bare subsistence, they were left with no better option than to sell their labour-power to survive. Whereas, the exploiting class, generally termed as the bourgeoisies, took the advantage of the situation and made more and more wealth out of the labours of the working class. Consequently, the wealth remained concentrated in the hands of only certain class of people, where most of them formed a part of the exploited class left with no freedom for work but to sell their labour-power.
The process of emergence of these conditioned was termed by Karl Marx as ‘primitive accumulation’ while in the words of Adam Smith, it was ‘previous accumulation.’ Therefore, the Dutch Marxist, William Bonger contended that criminal attitude develops among the working class under capitalism due to conditions of misery and at the same time the criminal attitude develops among the bourgeoisie from the avarice fostered when capitalism strives.
Therefore, it is to be understood that industrial capitalism brought about a grave change in the mind and attitude of the people. Accumulating money at the cost of others became the sole goal of the individual who were in a position to dominate over the will of the others. With this began the cat fight of grabbing money by hook or by crook.
Britain, among the other European countries were concerned, played the most nasty game in acquiring wealth giving up all the ethics and morals they ever had. They made wealth by looting their colonies and adopting the devastating barbaric method in doing it. According to the Parliamentary Reports, it has been found that the British East India Company, only within their first ten years of colonial rule in India extorted wealth from the Indians in the name of ‘gifts’ which worth round six million pound sterling. Therefore, there can be no denial of the fact the very structure of the industrial capitalism is built of crimes and criminality.
Therefore, as being discussed, the birth of white collar crimes took place the Industrial Revolution in Western industrial societies which led a vast impact all throughout the globe. The developing countries, which at that time were the colonies of the great European Nations, were the worst victims of these crimes so committed against them. New companies rose into power, they were able to squelch competitors and then implement monopolistic policies without fear of being outsold by other companies. The public had to pay outrageously exorbitant prices for the same thing that was available previously at a much cheaper rate. The reason behind the exorbitant rise in the price rate was nothing but the corporate greed.
However, it is to be understood that the greed of making money by the people of the upper class was not confined within the boundaries of Europe. The Industrial revolution threw a global impact whereby worldwide people indulged in making money. These gave rise to resentment and political movements rallied for laws so as to prevent monopolistic practices. It succeeded in United States of America in 1890, when Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act which took the initiative to make the monopolistic trade illegal. Other industrialized countries like Great Britain had a history of penalties involving white-collar crime by that time, but it was not as sweeping as the Sherman Act. Some nations implemented a smattering of these laws, known as competition or antitrust law, but did not have a strong binding force for a long time.
But more anti-white-collar crime sentiment rose in the late 19th century and early 20th century in the United States as a result of a group of journalists known as muckrakers who more often than not started exposing corruption both in the public and private sectors. They laid much focus on the prevalent stock fraud, insurance fraud and underhanded practices of monopolistic companies that had grabbed under the Sherman Act. The muckrakers’ exposes gave rise to public resentment and thereby called for in some reform. By 1914, Congress attempted to solidify and strengthen the sentiment laid down by the Sherman Act, which was used against labour unions, with the Clayton Antitrust Act. This Act was much stricter and went much further than the Sherman Act in making particular monopolistic practices illegal.
In addition to these anti-trust laws, there have been certain other fiscal laws which were passed prior to Sutherland’s address at the American Sociological Society. After the economic depression prevailing at that time, people went to great lengths to rebuild their financial security, and it is theorized that this led many hard workers who felt they were underpaid to take advantage of their positions. Despite the great lengths, Sutherland went to describe exactly what he categorized as white-collar crime. Though he tried to bring about clarity of the subject, it suffered from certain ambiguities as discussed later.
Therefore, it can be said that Sutherland was not the first to focus attention on the dangers of the society committed not by the traditional criminals, but by the upper socio-economic strata of the society. Albert Morris refers in his paper entitled, ‘Criminal Capitalists’ which was read by Edwin C. Hill, before the International Congress on the Prevention and Repression of Crime at London in 1872. There the writer underlined the growing incidence of crime as an organised business and its evil impact in the society. In 1934, Morris drew attention to the immediate necessity of changing emphasis regarding crime. But it must not denied that, it was Edwin Sutherland was the first to coin the term ‘white collar crime’ and to bring out the greater emphasis of the wrong being committed by the members of the upper classes.
Much of Sutherland’s work was focused at separating and defining the differences in blue collar street crimes such as murder, burglary, theft, assault, rape, arson, vandalism, so on and so forth which are often blamed on psychological, associational, and structural factors. Instead, he evaluated that white-collar criminals are opportunists, who over time look for the opportunity to take advantage of their circumstances to accumulate financial gain. They are educated, intelligent, affluent, confident individuals, who were qualified enough to get a job which allows them the unmonitored access to often large sums of money. Many also use their intelligence to con their victims into believing and trusting in their credentials.
Contributing factors behind white collar crimes:-
Though much debate has been raised as to the basis on which white collar crimes should be defined as well as whether white collar crimes fall within the strict boundary of criminal law, precisions as regard these are yet to be arrived at. Therefore, going by what Sutherland had put forward as the white collar crime, here we are to examine what are the contributing factors responsible for the development of white collar crime in the present society. It must be borne in mind that the nature of white collar crime, as propounded by Sutherland, is crimes committed by the elite class people during the pleasure of their office of profession.
So, the nature of white collar crimes has evolved in the urban areas with the concentration of the industry and commercial activities in the urban areas. The changing socio-economic scenario of the society coupled with the increase of wealth and prosperity has furnished opportunities for such crimes. But still, one pertinent question that still remains is that where lies the necessity or compulsion behind commission of these white collar crimes. Here the persons indulging in these crimes are neither unemployed nor the oppressed or humiliated to such an extent that they would resort to such crimes that attack the base of the moral structure of the society. On the contrary, they are well-off, suave and well-educated masses of the society who are fortunate enough to live a well comfortable life in the society. Therefore in trying to find out a tentative answer to this question it is often said that greed plays the dominant role behind the commission of these crimes. It has its root in competitive business community which tries to oust their rival competitors in order to earn maximum profits. The transnational encouragement of the hyper-mobility of capital, the never ending look for cheap foreign labour, the immobility of domestic labour, leads to the misuse and abuse of power by the corporate state. Globalization has lead to oligopolization and expansionism rather than genuine economic.
However the motives attributed behind the commission of white collar crimes are often not specific. Individuals change institutions and institutions change society. However, individuals acting on their own behalf are incidental to corporate deviance and white collar crimes. But from a general perception it can be said that an urge of making name and having more of a financial soundness are the contributing factors behind causation of white collar crimes. As for illustration, though there is a code of ethics for the practising advocates in the Advocates’ Act, 1961 in India, their nature of the profession involves the spirit of combat and competition for which they often resort to wrongful ways and tactics such as concealment and misrepresentation of facts. Even if the situation so requires according to them, they can drag themselves to the extent of bribing witnesses or even judges to make the case in their favour. These acts practised by the advocates for sustaining their social position and on the greed of making more and more wealth are crimes and therefore they should be prosecuted under the penal provisions. There are thousands of examples that can be illustrated in the same manner as regards other professions.
In this regard the question arises whether it is right to comment that white collar crimes stand at a different stature from the conventional crimes. The criminals in this field do not indulge themselves in the commission of the traditional crimes like that of rape, murder, robbery so on and so forth, but they are involved in acts such as embezzlement, bribery, stock-fraud, tax-evasion, misleading advertisement so as to defraud people. Since most of the business and professional relationships are based on trust, white collar crimes are spreading like a rapid fire they are causing breach of trust. Here the explanatory approach is to look into the individual motivations of what is taken to be clearly criminal behaviour. White collar crimes in that cases stand only as standard theories of crime causation. White collar crimes therefore can be said to be adopting of new tools for committing old crimes. The best illustration can be that of fraud committed through computer medium.
However these difficulties have not absolutely discouraged all the attempts of finding out the causation of crimes. But research on the causation of crime may be limited within the typography of crimes, crimes committed by professional people. Therefore going into the search for reason for the multiplicity of white collar crime is relatively high social-economic status of the white collar criminals. They influence their power to handle their occupation tactfully and persons affected in this process hardly know that they are being victimised. In this regard it must be mentioned that a white collar crime committed by an individual though affects the society and economy of a particular country, it goes out unnoticed and unpunished many a times since white collar crimes generally do not affect any particular individual, they affect the society at large. To add to that, it is often found that the criminal law administrators and the judges being the member of the upper strata of the society are generally sympathetic towards the white collar criminals while dealing with them. In many of the unfortunate cases, it is even found that the administrators or judges are the partners of the crimes being so committed. Therefore, apart from the sympathy factor there at times may be situations of mutual-appreciations and thereby, allowing the criminals to go free. Moreover, in cases, where only the sympathy factor plays among the judges, the latter often fail to demarcate the thin line of distinction between criminality and immorality involved in the white collar crimes.
The advancement in the field of science and technology, particularly during the closing years of the twenty-first century, has added fuel to the fire to the criminology of the white collar crimes, by allowing unprecedented growth of a new variety of electronic machine and computer dominated white collar crimes. Thus as has been pointed out earlier white collar crimes are to be understood as old crimes committed applying new colour in modus operandi. The only demarcation of these crimes from conventional crimes are the motive behind the causation of the crime, it is not of necessity but of greed which multiplies with the time frame.
White Collar Crimes in India:
White collar crimes are to be considered as a global phenomenon to which India is no exception. As discussed earlier, white collar crimes emerged in India with the advent of the British colonisation during the period of industrial capitalism. Prior to that, instances of men working with the District treasury embezzling with the money kept under his safe custody or bribing practised among the officials were found. Therefore, the white collar crimes were confined to this limit. Thus, the people indulging in the white collar crimes then can to said to be mere ‘grass eaters’ the people in the modern times have reached the stage of ‘meat-eaters’.
Thus the white collar crimes become phenomenon to be reckoned with industrial revolution. Modern industrial capitalist economy which evolved with time became complex in nature as it developed a growing commercial nexus among insurance, banking, stocks and related corporate matters. This in turn, gave rise to critical legal intricacies relating to property rights and other legal matters which paved the way for the birth of a new class of professionals of advocates who in the name of providing justice started abetting in the wrong and thereby pursued their own narrow interest. A large number of advocates evolved who forget the pious oath of serving the society and start looking for the legal loopholes and concentrate mainly in helping out the rich entrepreneurs to grow richer. They make extensive study to try out ways for maximum tax evasion for these rich corporate personalities as well as for themselves. The white collar crimes committed by these legal practitioners are not only confines in sorting out illegal methods of tax-evasion. There are very frequent instances of unscrupulous and unethical practises like that of fabricating false evidence, engaging professional witnesses, thereby violating ethical standards of legal profession and dilatory tactics in collusion with the ministerial staff of the courts.
Next to the instances of white collar crimes committed in the Indian society by the lawyers, there lie the shameful illustrations of Magistrates and judges involved in committing crimes. They in the name of interpreting the laws often act as the protective shield for the goons having or not-having any political colour and allow them to go free whereas they should have been subject to deterrence. It is the most unfortunate situation at the same time devastating, because here the crimes are committed by those individuals who are being given by the State the responsibility to ensure justice.
In India, the white collar crimes are so wide spread that it does not confine itself in the legal arena. Similar unfortunate instances can be drawn from other professions too, like that of medical practitioners, engineers, educationalists, businessmen, politicians and the list goes on. The medical practitioners are often found involved in issuance of false certificates, carrying out illegal abortions, selling out sample drugs and medicine, even in some cases adulterated drugs and medicines to the patients. Dilatory tactics are often adopted by them in providing treatment to their patients with a mens rea to extract huge amount of money, no matter the person has good practice. Some of the notorious instances are like that of Nithari case, where the medical professionals put up before the society the optimum level of brutal character they can reach for the crave of making money. Misleading and fake advertisement claiming absolute cure is also one of the frequent malpractices being carried out in the medical profession. The problem lies in the fact is, they often escape punishment, since they cannot be said to have violated the letter of law, but, by violating the spirit of law, they commit crimes which are truly anti-social and creates enormous damage to the public health and safely at large.
Speaking of the engineers’ role in having their role to play in white collar crimes, we often find instances of underhand dealing with contractors, suppliers, passing of sub-standard works and maintenance of bogus reports of the labour work. They financially earn more for their low grade works from the contractors, than they can earn for the genuine work. Therefore, many of them, out of the greed of earning more and more, play dangerously with thousands of lives of the individuals.
When the matter comes to the white collar crimes educational institutions do come in the league to operate with impunity. A nastier role is played by the private institutions who are least bothered in providing the education, but only concentrate of making business at the cost of the children’s future. Even rackets operate in these institutions for procuring students to appear in the examinations on the basis of manipulated eligibility certificates, thereby damaging the standard of education in India. When it comes to the Governmental institutions, the teachers and staffs of the institutions are often found to be involved in unscrupulous practices, since they can hardly make fortune from the inadequate salary they receive from the government. Teachers often drag the students for taking private tuitions and even go to the extent of blackmailing them of ruining their future, if they deny doing so.
These are only a handful of instances of white collar crimes practised in day to day life by certain professionals in the course of their profession. The major role in committing white collar crimes are played by the business tycoons and politicians, whose greed and wants multiply with the more they acquire. In India, whenever any major scandal comes to the media focus, a though investigation always finds an unlawful involvement of political parties in it. So far as the businessmen are concerned, their acts of white collar crimes go beyond count. They are termed as the corporate criminals who more often than not are involved in illegal contracts, combination and conspiracies of trade restraints, unfair labour practices, selling of adulterated foods and drugs, bribing of public officials so on and so forth. They take advantage of the corporate veil and indulge in a number of crimes. the recent Satyam scam case is one of the worth-mentioning illustrations, where it was seen how an individual, hiding himself in the veil of incorporation, indulge in defrauding crores of money.
The white collar crimes are often master minded and are carried out in a planned manner by technocrats in the form of scams, frauds, etc. facilitated by technological advancements. In these types of offences not only the individual is being with pecuniary loss but also, such offences like peddling drugs and narcotic substances, counterfeiting of currency, financial scams are some of the crimes which evoke serious concern and impact to the national security and governance. Violation of foreign exchange regulations, and import and export laws are frequently resorted to for the sake of huge profits.
Another major white collar crime very common among the individuals, no matter he/she belongs to the middle or upper strata of the society is that of evading taxes. The complexity of the taxation laws provided a number of loopholes through which many individuals tried to escape. A tax-evasion has known no professional or class boundary in our country. Be it an engineer, doctor, advocate, a business tycoon or a simple small industry trader-all has learnt the trick of evading taxes. The main difficulty posed before the Income Tax Department is to acquire true information of the real and exact income of these professionals. It is often alleged that only an insignificant amount of their total income is posed a income before the Income Tax Department and the rest therefore goes into the circulation as black money. The frequent modifications in the tax-laws of the country has been able to add very little to put a check on this continuing menace which is throwing a great negative impact in the Governmental revenue and thereby the growth of the country.
The Santhanam Committee Reportin its finding presented a clear picturesque description that in India the white collar crimes so defined, are mostly rampant among the businessmen, industrialists as well as corrupt officials and private practitioners. Highlighting the magnitude of the crimes in India, the Commission on “Prevention of Corruption” in its report quoted,
“The advancement of technological and scientific development is contributing to the emergence of ‘mass society’ with a large rank of file and a small controlling elite, encouraging growth of monopolies, the rise of the managerial class and intricate institutional mechanisms. Strict adherence to high standard of ethical behaviour is necessary for the even and honest functioning of the new social, political and economic processes. The inability of all sections to appreciate this need in full results in the emergence and growth of white collar and economic crimes renders enforcement of all laws, themselves not sufficiently deterrent, more-difficult. Tax evasion and avoidance, share-pushing, malpractices in the share market and administration of companies, monopolistic control, usury, under-voicing or over-voicing, hoarding, profiteering, substandard performance of contracts of constructions and supply, evasion of economic laws, bribery and corruption, election offences and malpractices are some examples of white collar crime.”
It was on the basis of the report of this Commission that a new chapter was suggested to include into the Indian Penal Code, 1860 by making amendments to the Act. The motive behind such suggestion was to bring white collar crimes under the purview of the criminal law and at the same time broadly classify the offences that can come under the purview of white collar crimes. The matter was referred to the Law Commission by the Government of India for considering it. However, the Law Commission disagreed with the proposal and observed that such offences which are put under the banner of white collar crimes are to be left to be dealt with by special and self-contained enactments which act as supplement to the basic criminal law. The reason behind that was, as discussed earlier, there have been a lot of debates regarding criminalising acts constituting white collar crimes.
However, in the Report of the Vivian Bose Commission of Inquiry highlighted how the industries indulge into white collar crimes such as fraud, falsification of accounts, tampering of records for personal gains, tax evasion, so on and so forth.
Control policies to be undertaken in eradicating white collar crimes:-
As has been studied so far, white collar crimes are not consequences of any drive of necessity. It is simply greed for multiplying wealth and to retain so called meaningless status in the society by pursuing rivalry with the competitors. These people indulging themselves in these activities are to be considered to the leeches, sucking blood of the society and in turn creating grave hindrances to the progress of the society. Since their acts rarely affect an individual directly, these are often ignored of by a common mass and thereby no single individual takes the pain of prosecuting against the offender. But it must not be forgotten that these crimes and criminals are slowly and steadily spreading their wings towards the society at large and much wrong has already done by now. Therefore, there is an immense need to curb it making no waste of time; otherwise it might totally paralyze and ultimate ruin the society.
The biggest hindrance that lays in the prevention of white collar crimes is the lack of public awareness. Since the individuals involved in these acts, do not generally affect a single individual, an urge of eradicating them, do not usher. Moreover, white collar crimes are yet not considered to be as grave as that of traditional crimes, so to it’s certain characteristics as mentioned earlier. Though they are likely to take shape of heinous crimes in times to come, yet there lie certain obstacles in considering them at par with traditional crimes. The acts coming under the purview of white collar crimes cannot be termed as crimes in the strict sense of term. Therefore apart from having the stringent penal or regulatory laws for deterring the persons involved in them, there is a first and foremost need of raising public awareness regarding the issues. The government has a comprehensive role to play in doing so through media or by initiating task forces who would act as watch dogs. Proper and methodical string action should be used randomly so as to catch the individuals involved in the white collar crimes red-handed.
Conclusion:-
Therefore, to conclude, it can be inferred that whatever reasons of justifications are there for the methods used for the control of white collar crimes, the ambivalence of the social response to this sort is so related to wider social factors which have both objective and subjective dimensions. As has been so mentioned a more subjective source of ambivalence in the social response to white collar crimes is the assumption that there is less public concern about these behaviours so termed as white collar crimes, and therefore there is a less support for severe sanctions than in the cases of crimes which are traditional street crimes. But even if there was greater public ambivalence towards white collar crimes in comparison to the traditional crimes, writers such as Box has regarded this as a further challenge ‘to sensitize people to not seeing processes in which they are victimised disasters or accidents.’
Therefore, the motto should always be prevention is better than cure. Since the acts involved defrauding public faith and belief, public as a whole mass should come forward to protect the whole society from these greedy people who are destroying the ethics and morality of the society slowly and slowly for their sole aim of pursuing narrow self interest.
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