Research On White-Collar Crime's Conception, Aetiology And Countermeasure

The concept of white-collar crime, which was put forward by Edwin Sutherland, the American professor in criminology and sociology in 1939, made a tremendous impact on the theory of street crime or general crime which had been restricted to the unprivileged people. This concept pithily reveals the longstanding, unclear white-collar crime problem, and clearly points out the criminals include not only paupers or persons mentally deranged who commit bloodguilt, crime of pillage, crime of theft, etc., but also the dapper upper-class people who utilize their professions, social status, influence and intelligence technique to commit the worse crimes which can invisibly evade the criminal law and avoid being punished effectively.More than half a century passed, and the research of western white-collar crime, though can't play the leading role in criminology research, has made considerable progress, researching white-collar crime, occupational crime, then to corporate crime or organized crime, and establish a relatively complete theory system.Today, white-collar crime has become a legal terminology in sociology, criminology and criminal jurisprudence. Especially since the scandal of American Enron Company, the theory of white-collar crime has become more and more important in instructing the white-collar crime's prevention and punishment.In contrast, Chinese criminology and criminal jurisprudence haven't paid necessary attention to white-collar crime. We have little theoretical investigation and few juristic works related to it for the reasons of both scruple about ideology and the lagging of the people's understanding.Theoretical research, however, should be prospective. We can't neglect the numerous white-collar crime phenomena which arose along with our country's reform and opening-up and market economy's great-leap-forward development, such as varied financial swindling, corruption and bribes that seem impossible to eradicate, environmental pollution causing great losses and the like. So we must keep high vigilance towards the white-collar crimes, analyzing them in time and putting forward the preventing and controlling measures, so as to restrain their large-scale outburst and destructive effect on our economic development.This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter introduces the definition and characteristics of the white-collar crime. By analyzing and researching the western concept of white-collar, we can divide Chinese white-collar crime research into three stages; make clear the definition of Chinese collar class, and mark off the limits of investigation.This chapter highlights Sutherland's original concept of white-collar crime. And on this basis, it reviews historical development of western white-collar crime research against its social background, pointing out that occupational crime and corporate crime are the two most significant subjects in contemporary western white-collar crime research.This part elementarily summarizes Chinese present research on white-collar crime, and based on it, the author investigates and introduces his own comprehension about it. In order to understand white-collar crime concept directly and accurately, this chapter illustrates its important characteristics from various angles.The second chapter analyzes the present situation and forming cause of white-collar crime and Chinese white-collar occupational crime, computer crime and organized crime at present, and points out the grim situation of white-collar crime in our country and its serious social perniciousness. And then this chapter proceeds to explore the cause of forming white-collar crime, emphasizes the theories of western white-collar crime including the Differential Association Theory, the Social Anomie Theory, the Subcultural Theory, the Theory of Citical Crime, A General Theory of Crime and takes advantage of their research findings to analyze the causes of Chinese white-collar crime in the social, individual and legal spheres according to the situation of our country on the stage.The third chapter puts forward the preventing and controlling countermeasures against white-collar crime. Whereas white-collar crime is a extremely complicated social phenomenon, and a single measure can hardly take effect, the author tries to come up with the comprehensive preventing and controlling measures from social regulation and control, individual management, network of legislation and judicature and other aspects.Social regulation and control highlights the importance of government, market and company; individual management emphasizes the effects from the moral instruction, education on white-collar crime and regime; and constructing the network of legislation and judicature demands there be laws to abide by, and the law must be enforced strictly. On the whole, the preventing and controlling measures against white-collar crime, supported by basic theories, should keep pace with our economic development, and improve the specific institutions to be scientific, rational and perfect, which should be executed and implemented effectively.