Criminology

In criminal law, corporate liability is the determinant to the extent at which a corporation as an artificial legal person is liable for acts of natural persons it employs. In certain circumstances, employees such as government officials, police and other civil workers commit mistakes. The mistakes by these people turn out to be liability to the artificial body as is observed in the case of corruption of public officials, police using operation ABSCAM and Mollen Commissions investigation of the New York police department (Paul, n.d). This results to a white or blue collar criminal conduct in which the former means a criminal conduct by high ranking officials in public offices while the latter means criminal conduct by lower social class individuals.

The description of criminal conduct in the above case fits white collar crimes because police officers considered to be of higher social class are involved in corruption. The conduct of the officials in this case are very much involving and it is very hard to trace the main criminals in such situation because it is an inside job. Higher social class officers in public offices engage in corruption because of poor pay and perhaps poor working conditions. These makes such officers to act against the provisions of law and are charged with miss use of public funds for self benefit. White collar crimes involve violation of trust and aims at significant monetary gain for the perpetrators. Such crimes include fraud, bribery, forgery, embezzlement and insider trading. To expose white collar crimes is a very difficult task and requires formation of a commission. For instance, in the case of Mollen Commission, it was recommended that a permanent watchdog with power and authority to oversee internal affairs of public offices should be incorporated. This is one of the most important aspects of criminology in which thorough investigation should be done before an individual is charged with white collar crime. Resistance from internal forces is a major challenge in dealing with white collar crimes (Paul, n.d). One major form of resistance is blue wall of silence. In this case, officers refuse to testify about others in the case of corruption and make it hard for investigators to acquire adequate information. One best measure that should be used to eliminate white collar crimes as in the mentioned case is to improve working conditions and provide good package.