Choosing White-Collar Crime

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, 2005 M11 14 - 212 pages
For more than three decades, rational-choice theory has reigned as the dominant approach both for interpreting crime and as underpinning for crime-control programs. Although it has been applied to an array of street crimes, white-collar crime and those who commit it have thus far received less attention. Choosing White-Collar Crime is a systematic application of rational-choice theory to problems of explaining and controlling white-collar crime. It distinguishes ordinary and upperworld white-collar crime and presents reasons theoretically for believing that both have increased substantially in recent decades. Reasons for the increase include the growing supply of white-collar lure and non-credible oversight. Choosing White-Collar Crime also examines criminal decision making by white-collar criminals and their criminal careers. The book concludes with reasons for believing that problems of white-collar crime will continue unchecked in the increasingly global economy and calls for strengthened citizen movements to rein in the increases.
 

Contents

Lure
27
The Predisposed and Tempted
51
SelfRestraint and Oversight
76
Decision Making
109
Criminal Careers and Career Criminals
130
Beyond the Law?
150
References
175
Index
205
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About the author (2005)

Neal Shover is Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where he teaches courses in criminology, white-collar crime and criminal justice. He is author of A Sociology of American Corrections (1979), Aging Criminals (1985), (with Donald A. Clelland and John P. Lynxwiler) Enforcement or Negotiation? Constructing a Regulatory Bureaucracy (1986), (with Werner Einstadter) Analyzing American Corrections (1989), Great Pretenders: Pursuits and Careers of Persistent Thieves (1996) and co-editor (with John Paul Wright) of Crimes of Privilege (2000). His work has appeared in Social Forces, Social Problems, the British Journal of Criminology, Criminology, Crime, Law and Social Change and numerous edited collections.

Andy Hochstetler is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Iowa State University where he teaches courses on crime at the graduate and undergraduate levels as well as a course on inequality and stratification. He writes on white-collar crime, prisoners, criminal decision making and recidivism. His work has appeared in numerous edited collections and journals including Criminology, Social Problems, the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Crime and Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, the Journal of Criminal Justice, Deviant Behavior and Crime, Law and Social Change.

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