White Collar Crime

White collar crime has been present for many years. It may have been over looked, but it still was present even in the twentieth century. White collar crime can be defined as nonviolent, illegal activities that principally involve traditional notions of deceit, deception, concealment, manipulation, breach of trust, subterfuge or illegal circumvention. White collar crime is a broad category containing many different types of offenses. Even things such as music piracy seem to fit this definition. Small crimes such as music piracy or illegal prescription drug buying is not really enforced much because these are not really major crimes. The criminal in this crime is probably an elderly individual or child. Most prosecutions of white collar crime happen to big business owners and not local citizens engaging in piracy. There really isn 't a clear cut reason behind this phenomenon. My theory on the whole issue is that business owners are well known most of the time. They are respected men or women in society. If they engage in such a crime they would probably create the most social havoc then an elderly person would that bought illegal prescription drugs. No one is going to care about a senior citizen buying drugs but attention would be enticed by business executives smuggling money and getting rich. The ironic thing about white collar crime is that the crime itself is not all that important. What I mean by important is that its affect on society is much greater than the monetary losses that happened because of it. When you engage in white collar crime you are misleading, lying, and being somewhat of a con man to all those individuals present around you and to those in society. This violates the trust of all those in your society. Now you have an unstable society, disorganized society, and a distrustful society. Those other crimes mentioned before don 't have this much of an affect on social institutions or social organizations. Many people feel as if crimes are just