White Collar Crime

Catalog description

White-Collar Crime focuses on a wide range of criminal activity that is committed, by-in-large, within the confines of the category of ones’ occupation (financial, political, various sectors). In this course, a systemic approach will be taken to understand how white-collar crime moves through the institution of policing, the court system, and the corrections system. Students will also be engaged via assigned historical Case Studies, which depict various higher profile criminals who violated laws within the economic system, the corporate system, the housing system, systems of social control, and the health care system, as well as crimes in sales-related occupations and environmental crimes. Finally, students will learn about who the perpetrators of these crimes are, who is victimized by these crimes, criminological-based theories that explain why these crimes occur, how trends in white-collar crimes have changed over time, and how white-collar crime compares to street crime, and often runs parallel to traditional crime, or in collaboration.