White-collar crime and the justice department: the institutionalization of a concept
The sudden and unexpected incorporation of white-collar crime as a top investigative priority of the U.S. Justice Department of the 1970s is the focus of this inquiry. This pursuit of white-collar crime is especially problematic for instrumentalist and structuralist variants of conflict theory, whic...
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| Medienart: | Elektronisch Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Veröffentlicht: |
1992
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| In: |
Crime, law and social change
Jahr: 1992, Band: 17, Heft: 3, Seiten: 235-252 |
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Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
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| Verfügbarkeit prüfen: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Zusammenfassung: | The sudden and unexpected incorporation of white-collar crime as a top investigative priority of the U.S. Justice Department of the 1970s is the focus of this inquiry. This pursuit of white-collar crime is especially problematic for instrumentalist and structuralist variants of conflict theory, which generally view the origins of law in terms of the interests of a ruling or capitalist class. This apparent contradiction between official concern for white-collar crime and instrumentalist and structuralist theories of law creation is examined in the context of the "discovery" of white-collar crime by the Justice Department. It is noted that in the process of operationalizing white-collar crime, the Justice Department transformed the traditional (Sutherland) definition of white-collar crime so that targeted offenders are not limited to the economic and political elite, but instead are drawn from all social classes. This modification of the definition has far-reaching implications for assessing the nature of the Justice Department's response to the problem of elite crime and provides insight into the ongoing theoretical debate on the origins of law. |
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| ISSN: | 1573-0751 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/BF00179750 |