The frontier of biomedical science has rarely been an exciting and as full of spectacular opportunities as it is today. From basic science through clinical research to health services research, the opportunities made available through the impressive advances of recent decades in the biomedical as well as the physical, computational, and behavioral and social sciences have brought us to a frontier of unprecedented opportunity. Although traditionally structured laboratory and clinical investigations are still its most essential components, several technical and scientific breakthroughs have altered how research is conducted. For example, high-throughput technologies are enabling rapid accumulation of unprecedented amounts of biological and health-related information. Nucleic acid and protein databases are revolutionizing some of the ways in which the structure and function of biomolecules and cells are studied.
Due to the ambiguous definitions and wide scope of crimes of the powerful, the contributions that will be discussed will focus on white collar crime, as that seems to be where more of the research focuses. The term “white collar crime” was coined by Sutherland in 1939, which he defined as a “phenomenon of lawbreaking by respectable persons of the upper reaches of society” (Reurink, 2016, p. 387). These are crimes of convenience rather than passion, with the powerful using their position to save time and effort to reach their greedy ends (Gottschalk, 2016). Theoretical contributions to white collar crime conceptualization have been drawn from sociology and psychology, starting with Freud and his discussions of conflict of desires and needs that cause people to commit crime (Friedrichs, 2010). According to this framework, white collar criminals desire conventional success, and they need to achieve this success by any means necessary. With this, Sutherland discusses personality traits of white collar criminals, claiming that they have normal personality types with more tendency toward risk- taking, ambition, and egocentrism, which would explain their “subtle” criminality that doesn’t follow typical norm infractions (Friedrichs, 2010). White collar crimes are often not included in official statistics, and most victims are unaware of their victimhood, as these “subtle” crimes occur in private and are typically covered up (Maguire et al., 1994). Next, Gottfredson and Hirschi offer sociogenic explanations, that criminals have lower self-control and therefore make conscious choices to commit crimes (Friedrichs, 2010). White collar crimes are not crimes of passion; they are calculated, conscious decisions people make as a means to an end.
Sutherland, Clinard, and Yeager finally make the important distinction between crimes of corporations and crimes of individuals within the corporations (Olejarz, 2016). It is important to distinguish between these points when considering theory, causes, and consequences. In fact, there has been a recent push in theory to focus on offense criteria instead of individual offenders of white collar crime (Maguire et al., 1994). Sykes and Matza’s techniques of neutralization come into play here. The five techniques – deny responsibility, deny injury through rationalization, deny the existence of a victim, condemn the condemners, and appeal to higher loyalties – are contributed to the structural problems with white collar crime (Friedrichs, 2010, p. 237; Ruggiero, 2015). Powerful white collar offenders use these techniques to distance themselves from the corporation and to shirk themselves of any blame.
