How are individual-level white-collar crimes and corporate crimes similar? Include in your ...

White-collar crime today represents a range of behaviors involving individuals acting alone and within the context of a business structure. The victims of white-collar crime can be the general public, the organization that employs the offender, or a competing organization. There have been numerous attempts to create subcategories or typologies of white-collar criminality. The one used here contains seven elements, ranging from an individual using a business enterprise to commit theft-related crimes to an individual using his or her place within a business enterprise for illegal gain, to business enterprises collectively engaging in illegitimate activity. Corporate crime is a type of white-collar crime that involves situations in which powerful institutions violate the laws that are meant to restrain these institutions from doing social harm. Corporate crimes are socially injurious acts committed by people who control companies to further their business interests. The target of their crimes can be the general public, the environment, or even company workers. What makes these crimes unique is that the perpetrator is a legal fictiona corporationand not an individual. In reality, it is company employees or owners who commit corporate crimes and who ultimately benefit through career advancement or greater profits. For a corporation to be held criminally liable, the employee committing the crime must be acting within the scope of his employment and must have actual or apparent authority to engage in the particular act in question.