White Collar Crimes in India

Abstract

This thought evolved with the Criminologist and Sociologist Edwin H. Sutherland, in the year 1939, who popularised the term white collar crimes‘ by defining such a crime as one committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation. Sutherland also included crimes committed by corporations and other legal entities within his definition. Sutherland‘s study of white collar crime was prompted by the view that criminology had incorrectly focused on social and economic determinants of crime, such as family background and level of wealth. It is true to the common knowledge that there are certain professions which offer lucrative opportunities for criminal acts and unethical practises which is very often overlooked by the general mass of the society. There have been crooks and unethical persons in business, various other professions, who tend to become unscrupulous because of no reason apart from the thirst of gaining more and more for themselves. These deviants have least regard for ethical and moral human values. Therefore, they carry on their illegal activities with impunity without the fear of loss of respect and prestige. These crimes are of the nature of white collar crimes‘which is the essential outcome of the development of the competent economy of the twenty-first century.