Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [186]
White-collar criminals, after all, are typically richer than the average street criminal. They can hire better lawyers; they are more sophisticated and articulate. All this surely helps. What may help even more is the general perception that they are “not really criminals,” that their acts are “not really crimes.” Severity of sentence, then, depends on what society as a whole—and judges, juries, and enforcers—think about the moral quality of defendant’s acts.
“White-collar crime” is, in some ways, a garbage-can category; it is too varied for any single generalization. Some of these offenses are very salient; others are not. Boesky and his travails made headlines; so did the tax fraud indictment of Leona Helmsley, the “queen of mean,” a woman who owned or controlled (with her husband) posh hotels and prime real estate. She, too, went to jail.61 Most white-collar crimes are obscure. Some are enormously common. A little bit of tax fiddling is probably as common as hay fever. Apparently, millions of people cheat on their taxes without losing a wink of sleep.
It seems also quite normal to cheat insurance companies (many of them cheat back). According to a newspaper report published in 1992, fraud against these companies is so common and so blatant in Massachusetts that, by one estimate, 40 percent of all auto insurance claims in that state have a bogus element. A recent study estimated, too, that as many as 90 percent of the injury claims in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the 1990s involved “either fraud or severe abuse.”62 Some people even dump their cars in rivers and report them stolen to collect on their insurance. Not many of these cheaters get caught. Those who do, get off with a small fine or a slap on the wrist.
The report gives the impression that insurance fraud, which is certainly nothing new, is now growing by leaps and bounds. There is, of course, no reason to think that Massachusetts is a unique den of thieves. Anecdotal evidence seems to confirm the fears of insurance companies; so do skyrocketing insurance rates. This may reflect a massive increase in the number of people who think it is okay to cheat an insurance company.
The police do not, in general, bother themselves with white-collar crime—they have other things to do. Insurance companies have an interest, of course, but they find it cheaper and easier just to raise premiums. And the public is obviously not outraged about the problem—it is the public, after all, that does the cheating.
Beyond a doubt, old norms—thou shalt not steal, for one—have gotten weaker in the late twentieth century. A kind of double standard seems to be developing. Many people who would not dream of cheating the people next door—or lifting their friend’s wallet, or mugging a stranger—apparently have much less scruples about filching something from Sears Roebuck, or from city hall or the federal government. These very large entities seem to be endlessly rich. Taking a bit of the cream from them does not seem so very terrible. This makes large organizations especially vulnerable to certain kinds of crime. Plain, ordinary theft is part of the picture: billions of dollars leak out of inventories and storehouses. White-collar crime is the corresponding leakage in the office. Where protection is weak, detection unlikely, and enforcement sporadic and unreliable, all sorts of crimes proliferate. The twentieth century seems to be the golden age of crime, and white-collar crime is no exception.
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REALIGNMENT AND REFORM
STARTLING CHANGES HAVE TAKEN PLACE IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN THE COURSE of the twentieth century. These changes have affected substantive law, procedural law, and the law of corrections. In many ways, however,