White Collar Crimes

It is common knowledge that certain professions offer lucrative opportunities for criminal acts and unethical practices which hardly attract public attention. There have been croocks and unethical persons in business, professions and even in public. They tend to become unscruplous because of their neglect at school, home and other social institutions where people get training for citizenship and character building. These deviants have scant regard for honesty and other ethical values. Therefore they carry on their illegal activities with impunity without the fear of loss of prestige or status. These crimes are essentially an outcome of competitive economy.

The anti social activities of persons of the upper strata in their occupations, which have come to be known as white collar crimes have been given their due importance in the recent past only after the pioneering work done by Prof. Edwin H Sutherland in the area of great contemporary concern. The favourable treatment to these crimes is due to the reasons which includes the belongingness of judges, legislators and commission members to the same social class to which white collar criminals belong; the trend if not of publishing these offenders; unorganised and ineffective resentment of exploitation by white collar criminals and last but not the least is the newspapers which can publicise white collar criminals are controlled by the business men. The opposition is weak because the channels through which they operate are devious and injuries caused by such offences are diffused amongst the masses.

White collar crime is a social reality. The irreparable loss to the society in general although not realised immediately must be viewed seriously. Those in government jobs while committing embezzlement of government's money cause grave loss to the society at the burden of the honest tax payers leading to the failure of national economy. The more society is advancing, the more white collar crimes are increasing.

Some of the professions involving technical expertise and skills provide sufficient opportunities for white collar criminals. They include medical profession, engineering, legal practise, private educationsl institutions etc. The persons belonging to the medical profession includes white collar crimes in the form of issuance of false medical certificates, helping illegal abortions, secret service to dacoits by giving expert opinion leading to their acquittal and selling sample drugs and medicines to the patients and chemists. a simple question in my mind creeps IS HUMAN LIFE THAT CHEAP??? Underhand dealings with contractors and suppliers, passing of sub standard works and materials and maintenance of bogus records of work charged labour are some of the good examples of wite collar crimes in the engineering sector.
In India the lawyer's profession is also not exempted from such crimes. The deteriorating standards of legal education and unethical practices resorted to by the members of legal profession to procure clientage are mainly responsible for the degradation of this profession which was once considered to be one of the noblest vocations. As far as legal profession is concerned, there is a definite copde of conduct for the professionals and i am feeling proud to state that this is not a mere ornamental document. In India judicial attitude towards the white collar criminals is not mild as compared to the crimes involving voilence. the name of Justice Krishna Iyer deserves to be mentioned who is sympathetic in his judgements to the offenders of voilence but not to the white collar criminals. The latest developments in the IT sector and electronic media have given rise to new variety of computer related white collar crimes ofently called as cyber crimes. Pheakering, internet frauds, hackers, stalking, email security invasion, money laundering and the list is huge....

Not everything is new, but definitely its an ALARMING SITUATION......

Ramakant Gaur
Advocate
Supreme Court of India
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