Moral Panic and White Collar Crime: The Legislative Response

Abstract

The price tags attached to white collar crime today are staggering. Clearly losses to public markets such as $70 billion in the US for Enron and $500 million in Canada with Livent are incomprehensible. There are also significant human costs to white collar crime. Victims suffer the loss not only of money but self-esteem and hopes for a fulfilling retirement. Even the casual consumer of the mass media encounters, almost daily, reports of harmful or destructive crime committed by privileged citizens and large corporations. The Canadian government’s response to the moral panic engendered by this emotionally charged news coverage has been the proposal for a mandatory minimum sentence for large frauds and the removal of the availability of a conditional sentence. The scholarship surrounding both these sanctions however is that they do not meet any criminological purpose. Indeed, the empirical evidence is that crime rates generally, and the incidents of fraud specifically have been falling for decades. The perceived risk of economic deceit far outstrips the actual risk.

Keywords: white collar crime, moral panics, mandatory minimum sentences, conditional sentences