Lesson 13: Street Crime and White Collar 
Crime and the Prison Industrial Complex
Social Problems
Robert Wonser
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Types of Economic Crimes
 Blue-collar Crimes - Traditional common
law theft crimes such as larceny,
burglary, and arson.
 White-collar Crimes - Crimes of business
enterprise such as embezzlement, price
fixing, and bribery.
 Green-collar Crimes - Crimes that affect
the environment.
White-Collar Crimes
 Business frauds and
swindles
 Ponzi schemes – An
investment fraud that
involves the payment
of purported returns to
existing investors from
funds contributed by
new investors.
The OG Ponzi, Charles
Ponzi, 1929
Bernie Madoff, 2009
White-Collar Crimes
 Influence peddling - Using one's
institutional position to grant favors and
sell information to which one's coconspirators are not entitled.
 Influence peddling in government
 Influence peddling in criminal justice
 Influence peddling in business
White-Collar Crimes
 Embezzlement - A type of larceny in
which someone who is trusted with
property fraudulently converts it to
his or her own use or for the use of
others.
 Client fraud
 Health care fraud
 Tax evasion
White-Collar Crimes
 Corporate (organizational)
crime - Powerful institutions or
their representatives willfully
violate the laws that restrain
these institutions from doing
social harm or require them to
do social good.
Theories of White-Collar and Green-Collar
Crimes
 Rational Choice: Greed
 Lure
 Rational Choice: Need
Theories of White-Collar and Green-Collar
Crimes
 Rationalization/Neutraliza
tion View
 Cultural View
 Self-Control View
Class Discussion/Activity
Discuss which of the criminological theories
fits best for green-collar criminals.
 Rational Choice
 Greed
 Need
 Cultural
 Self-Control
 Others?
Controlling White-Collar and Green-Collar
Crime
 Deterrence versus Compliance
 Compliance strategies: Methods of
controlling white-collar crime that rely on
the threat of economic sanctions or civil
penalties to control potential violators.
 Deterrence strategies: Methods of
controlling white-collar crime that rely on
punishment to deter would-be violators.
The Prison Industrial Complex
 The term prison–industrial complex
(PIC) is used to attribute the rapid
expansion of the US inmate
population to the political influence
of private prison companies and
businesses that supply goods and
services to government prison
agencies.
Incarceration Trends
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Incarceration Rate
 Paid between 93¢ and $4.73 per day,
and collecting no benefits, prisoners
are a cheap labor source for about
100 companies (source).
 If you’ve bought products by or from
Starbucks, Nintendo, Victoria’s Secret,
JC Penney, Sears, Wal-Mart, K-Mart,
Eddie Bauer, Wendy’s, Proctor &
Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Fruit of the
Loom, Motorola, Caterpiller, Sara Lee,
Quaker Oats, Mary Kay, or Microsoft,
you are part of this system.
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 When prisoners are in state and federal prisons,
the U.S. taxpayer is subsidizing low wages and
corporate profits, since they are paying for
prisoners’ room, board, and health care.
 When prisoners are in private prisons, prison labor
is a way to make more money off of the human
beings caught in the corrections industry.
 In other words, prison labor is an efficient way for
corporations to continue to increase their profits
without sharing those gains with their employees.
 Prison Labor is Cheap
 Angela Davis on PIC