White Collar Crime Report

White-collar crimes refer to a large range of frauds committed by business or government officials. These crimes are usually financially driven and non-violent, but it is not victimless. White-collar crimes can still destroy a company; harm family relations and cost money to individuals who are not involved in the incident. According to the Federal Investigation of Bureau (2015), this term was first introduced in 1939; as crimes committed by individuals who are trusted and obtain high position in his/her occupation. Common white-collar crimes in Hong Kong include fraud, money laundering and embezzlement etc. Imprisonment, fines, community service or probation are typical sentencing of white-collar crimes in Hong Kong. White-collar crimes are

There are 3 types of strain that could lead to crime, the failure to achieve positively valued goal, the removal or expected removal of positively valued stimuli and confronting or expecting to confront to negative stimuli (Payne, 2013). For the strain as failure to achieve positively valued goal, it might be the fact that there is differences between fair outcomes and the actual outcomes, meaning that an individual is not being treated justly. There might also be difference between achievements and expectations as well. In white-collar crime cases, it might due to the fact that the worker contributed a lot of effort to the company but not receiving logical rewards. For the strain as removal or expected removal of positively valued stimuli, it could lead to delinquency. Possible examples might be losing a close friend at work hence lessen the emotional support received at company, or as a mean to maintaining the job status as they already invested so much in the career. Hence, the fear of falling is actually common in workplace. Thirdly, the strain as confronting or expecting to confront negative stimuli means that people are experiencing negative life events. Possible situations would be sexual or verbal abuse at work. The negative working environment will affect the possibility of crime

The strain theory is considered as one of the strongest theory supporting the causes of criminal behavior, but is the theory suitable for explaining white-collar crime? Indeed, the general strain theory provided an insight to stressors in micro level and predicted possible outcomes, but is it effective in explaining complex level corporate crime? Langton and Piquero (2007) conducted a research to study whether general strain theories correlates with white-collar crime of different types. In order to measure strain, index with 6 variables are adopted, such as number of legal marriages, academic performance etc. The principles of general strain theory are being examined; the first focus is the relationship between strain and motivation. It was suggested that negative emotions will lead to crime, and those of the white-collar crimes are different from that of street crimes. It was found that negative emotions are significant predictor of financial motives (Langton and Piquero, 2007). As most of the white-collar crimes are associated with monetary gains, strains should be related to concern in financial areas, it seems that general strain theory is indeed effective in predicting personal level crime. The relationship between strain and white collar offending is investigated and find that general strain theory is better at predicting white-collar crime that is less