Policing and Regulating Financial Crime

Abstract

Western literature provides competing perspectives on whether the powerful and the powerless receive equal treatment by law enforcement authorities. In the tradition of Durkheim (1997), the consensus position suggests that the criminal justice system embodies commonly agreed upon social norms and values (Friedman, 1977). From this perspective, decisions are made impartially and determined through legally defined offense characteristics, such as the seriousness of the crime and the offender’s prior criminal record. Conversely, the conflict perspective suggests that discrimination in criminal justice processing is a result of conflict between relatively powerless offenders and elite social groups who are able to promote and maintain self-interest (Coleman, 2006; Reiman 2007). Donald Black (1976) argues that offenders with higher status in society experience less severe legal responses. Those with diminished status in multiple stratification categories are hypothesized to be at a greater disadvantage in the eyes of the law.