Criminology

While sometimes it is rather difficult to understand why highly educated, smart and successful people holding good positions in the large local and multinational companies risk all they have to lie, steal or hack, the answer is rather simple  because they can do it and feel challenged to hack complicated systems to steal money, passwords, accesses and other intelligence (Jacobson and Green, 2002).

Although institutions and organizations do not generate the opportunities, motives, and means for white-collar crime on purpose, their structure and business activities are what create motives and opportunities for white-collar crimes. The computerized systems applied in merely all business activities and interactions become an attractive challenge for those with advanced computer skills who using their positions and access to certain information and systems can commit illegal actions to gain economic or other types of benefits.

White-collar crimes have very great negative impact on the social structure. In many cases, corporations may possibly be a reason of heavily fined. However, the social impact of strictly punishing an organization may give jobs opportunities to hundreds of people in addition to supplying social requirements, which can be more negative than the primary contravention of the law (Rosoff, Pontell and Tillman, 2002). White-collar criminals often use the technique of neutralization of their crimes to minimize guilt of their illegal actions and court sentence of imprisonment (Jacobson and Green, 2002).

The example of the white-collar organizationalcorporate crime can be vividly observed on the example of the documentary titled Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room directed by Alex Gibney (Green, 2006). The film describes how Chairman Ken Lay and CEO Jeff Skilling ruined the giant energy company Enron because of their greediness and left thousands of people without job, large amounts of invested money and hopes for future. Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Andrew Fastow, Tom Belton and others occurred to be greedy white-collar criminals whose actions were directed not only toward money, but also toward another two types of goals in the white-collar crime, that is, profit and political power.

Moreover, Enron executives were blamed in another type of white-collar crime, that is, neglect of worker safety requirements. Chemical companies, coal mines and energy and oil companies (including energy company Enron) have high rates of death while organizations make profit. The film give actual tone of voice clips from Enron employees by making a wide range discussion about transferring electricity from California state into nodes in other states where there was a extra. It started when California had signed legislation to working for free in energy markets. As a result of that, Enron formed a demand by causing blackouts crossways the state. Based on this price of electricity skyrocket, it was the right time for Enron to take back the energy they took out of California back into California, which lead to big profits which can be billions upon billions of dollars in profits (Green, 2006).