White Collar Crime: How Much is Enough?
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While one might be able to understand why someone who is poor may shoplift or commit burglary, it is much harder to understand why those who seem to have plenty of money commit crimes to get even more. We have seen a steady stream of individuals convicted and punished for white collar crimes involving millions of dollars. The question is evidently not whether they knew what they were doing was wrong, but rather, how much money is ever enough
Allen Stanford The most recent king of the Ponzi schemes, Stanford has been charged with running a $7 billion scheme. A Ponzi scheme is when an of- fender convinces investors that they can make large returns on their money and uses subsequent investors to pay earlier ones. As long as new investors are con- vinced to put in their money, the scheme continues. It collapses when investors want to withdraw their principal—because there isn’t any. This fl amboyant businessman, who was awarded a knighthood in the tiny Caribbean country of Antigua, is believed to have defrauded thousands of investors, using the money to fund a profl igate lifestyle.
Bernard Madoff Madoff obtained notoriety in one of the largest Ponzi schemes ever uncovered, stealing
between $10 and $20 billion. He defrauded thou- sands of investors, including many charitable organi- zations. Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence for his crimes.
Dennis Kozlowski The former head of Tyco Interna- tional was convicted and sentenced to 8 to 25 years for misappropriating more than $400 million from the company.
Lord Conrad Black This newspaper magnate was con- victed in 2007 of diverting funds from his company to his personal use. He was sentenced to 78 months.
Andrew Fastow and Jeffrey Skilling The former Enron CFO and CEO were sentenced for fraud, insider trad- ing, money laundering, and conspiracy for concealing the company’s true financial situation from federal regulators and shareholders. They are currently in fed- eral prison.
Bernard Ebbers This former WorldCom CEO was convicted of an $11 billion fraud against investors.
Source: BusinessWeek Online, July 6, 2006, www. businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_06/b3970083. htm (accessed June 28, 2010).
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14 P A R T I | Ethics and the Criminal Justice System
and Trevino, 1996). Some looters in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina may have been stealing food as a matter of necessity, but many others exploited the natural disaster to take what belonged to others. Theories abound endorsing everything from learning and role modeling to biological predisposition, but we still haven’t answered fundamental questions of causation. Even with all the scientifi c and philosophical attempts to explain human action, we are left with troubling questions when we read or hear about people who kill, steal, or otherwise offend our sense of morality. Evil is still one of the great m ysteries of life.
In discussions concerning these questions, basic beliefs about the nature of human- kind must be considered. Are people fundamentally bad and held in check only by rules and fear of punishment? Or are people fundamentally good and commit bad acts because of improper upbringing or events that subvert their natural goodness? Or are there funda- mentally bad and fundamentally good people who are just “born that way” for no reason? An applied ethics approach, as we will illustrate below, presumes that individuals gener- ally prefer to do what is right. In those circumstances where the right thing to do is unclear, there are steps to take to help make the decision easier.
Analyzing Ethical Dilemmas Ethical discussions in criminal justice focus on issues or dilemmas. Ethical issues are broad social questions, often concerning the government’s social control mechanisms and the impact on those governed—for example, what laws to pass, what sentences to attach to certain crimes, whether to abolish the death penalty, and whether to build more prisons or use community correctional alternatives. The typical individual does not have much control over these issues. The ethical issues that arise in relation to criminal justice are serious, diffi cult, and affect people’s lives in fundamental ways. These are just a sample of some criminal justice issues that have ethical implications:
Decriminalization of soft drugs • Megan’s Law and other sex-offender registry statutes • The death penalty • Mandatory DNA registries • Three-strikes legislation • Racial profi ling • Law-enforcement corruption • Waiver of juveniles to adult courts • Citizen oversight committees for police departments • The Patriot Act and other challenges to civil liberties in the wake of terrorism •
Periodically we will highlight a criminal justice policy issue in this text to illustrate the relationships among law, policy, and ethics. The issue of the medical use of marijuana is examined in this chapter’s Policy Box.
While ethical issues are broad social questions, ethical dilemmas are situations in which one person must make a decision about what to do. Either the choice is unclear or the right choice will be diffi cult because of the costs involved. Ethical dilemmas involve the individual struggling with personal decision making, whereas ethical issues are topics for which one might have an opinion but rarely a chance to take a stand that has much impact (unless one happens to be a Supreme Court judge or a state governor).
ethical issues Diffi cult social questions that include controversy over the “right” thing to do.
ethical dilemmas Situations in which it is diffi cult to make a decision, either because the right course of action is not clear or the right course of action carries some negative consequences.
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Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.