M.A. / White-collar crime has had a significant impact on the economy and the quality of life of all the citizens of this country. The emphasis in addressing this problem has traditionally been on the limitation of risk to commit white-collar crime as well ason the 'typical' characteristics of white-collar offenders. The aim of this study was to understand this phenomenon from a different perspective: the ecosystems that have an influence on the causation and maintenance of white-collar crime. To determine which ecosystems played a role the researcher interviewed white-collar criminals who had already been convicted, and were serving prison sentences in the Gauteng Province. They were from both sexes, different race groups, different ages and they had committed different types of white-collar crime. The following ecosystems and subsystems were identified as contributing to causation and maintenance of white-collar crime: the individual: behaviour, emotion and relationships (in general and specific relationships). The bank environment Opportunity, as an element of all the systems, was also identified as a contributing factor. The researcher also identified two patterns in which the ecosystems interact. Different white-collar crime processes are indicated through these patterns. The main difference between these patterns is that some people commit the crime because they consider it to be the best solution to problem situation whereas other people commit the crime only because the opportunity to do so, exists. Most of the findings in the interviews can be confirmed by existing literature although there were some findings for which literature can't indicate a direct relationship. Recommendations are aimed at addressing the dynamics between the ecosystems as identified by the respondents. The most important aspect to bear in mind is that people do not function in isolation and constantly influence each other. We are co-creators of our reality and can therefore influence our environment by what we contribute to it through interaction and dialogue.

The pillaging of companies by those who control them is becoming a common occurence in South Africa. The problem arises where those in control of a company are its sole shareholders and the property they are charged with stealing, though not legally belonging to them, is vested in an entity which itself belongs to them. One defence is that there can be no theft where the company consents to the appropriation of its funds. It is argued that a theft is committed only where all the criminal elements of the crime of theft are satisfied, notwithstanding the consent, or absence thereof, by the company. Case law indicates that a conviction depends on the : solvency or insolvency of the company; degree of control and victim of the appropriation. It is submitted that it is inappropriate to base a conviction on these criteria. All abuses of the corporate structure should be punished. / Mercantile Law / LL. M.

Institutional anomie theory (IAT) explains the variation in crime at the societal level by the combination of cultural features, and the institutional balance of power between Economy and non-economic institutions. IAT has had empirical support at the national level as well as within country variation to explain both street and white-collar crimes. This study sought to explore embezzlement trends within IAT framework via the economic, family, political and educational institutions in Japan (1985-2005), a country that emulates some elements of American capitalism yet has strong collective cultural norms that is known for exerting strong informal social control. By converting the original rate data into z-scores the trends were standardized on the same scale, so variations in economic and structural conditions over time on Japanese embezzlement were easier to observe. The implications for IAT were discussed.

The pillaging of companies by those who control them is becoming a common occurence in South Africa. The problem arises where those in control of a company are its sole shareholders and the property they are charged with stealing, though not legally belonging to them, is vested in an entity which itself belongs to them. One defence is that there can be no theft where the company consents to the appropriation of its funds. It is argued that a theft is committed only where all the criminal elements of the crime of theft are satisfied, notwithstanding the consent, or absence thereof, by the company. Case law indicates that a conviction depends on the : solvency or insolvency of the company; degree of control and victim of the appropriation. It is submitted that it is inappropriate to base a conviction on these criteria. All abuses of the corporate structure should be punished. / Mercantile Law / LL. M.

The problem of this study concerns the perception of the seriousness of corporate and property crime by groups from various social classes and groups with diverse exposure to prison. Hypotheses relating sex, race, age, exposure to prison, and social class to the perceived seriousness of the two types of crime are presented. In order that these hypotheses be tested, the 211 respondents from prison- and the 182 respondents from the general population ranked five corporate and five property crimes according to seriousness. The findings reveal no significant differences by sex, race, and age. Within all social classes and all categories of exposure to prison, no significant differences between the perceived seriousness of corporate and property crimes.exist.

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 119-126).

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 119-126) Also available in print.

published_or_final_version / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences. / Department of Sociology

This dissertation is a legal and cultural history of personal debt in mid-nineteenth-century Moscow region. Historians have shown how the judicial reform of 1864 dismantled an old legal apparatus that was vulnerable to administrative interference and ultimately depended upon the tsar's personal authority, replacing it with independent judges, jury trials, and courtroom oratory. But as many legal scholars will agree, political rhetoric about law and high-profile appellate cases fail to capture the full diversity of legal phenomena. I therefore study imperial Russian law in transition from the perspective of individuals who used the courts and formed their legal strategies and attitudes about law long before the reform. I do so through close readings of previously unexamined materials from two major archives in Russia: the Central Historical Archive of Moscow and the State Archive of the Russian Federation, including the records of county- and province-level courts and administrative bodies, supplemented by the records of the charitable Imperial Prison Society. I also analyze the relevant legislation found in imperial Russia's Complete Collection of the Laws. Specific topics covered in the study include the cultural and social profiles of creditors and debtors and of their relations, the connection between debt and kinship structures and strategies, the institution of debt imprisonment and its rituals, various aspects of court procedure, as well as the previously unstudied issue of white-collar crime in imperial Russia. I have found that debt was ubiquitous in Russian life, as in other pre-industrial societies in which cash was scarce, incomes erratic, and formal credit institutions insufficient. It was also overwhelmingly personal, relying heavily on kinship, acquaintance, and the reputations of borrowers and lenders. My research contradicts the conventional view of Russian society at mid-century as a system of predominantly separate and closed estates. The system of private credit centered in Moscow connected merchants, civil servants, and the landowning gentry, and even wealthy peasants, some of whom lived or owned property in far-away provinces (privately-owned serfs were of course subordinate to their landlords in matters involving property). The credit network was sufficiently extensive and diverse to place an additional burden on Russia's already overworked legal system. The central theme of my study is the engagement of ordinary Russian lenders and borrowers of varying wealth and status, male and female, with each other and with the legal system (and through it with the state) during a crucial turning point in Russia's social and political history. My research also questions the dominant notion of a closed system of inquisitorial justice in pre-reform courts. The cases I examined reveal the pre-reform legal process as messy, incomplete, polyphonic, and open to extra-legal influences, including those of tsarist administrative officials. Private individuals retained significant discretion and initiative both according to the law and in practice, beginning with the way a debt transaction was formalized and ending with the decision to imprison a debtor or to commit an insolvent to a criminal trial. I therefore argue that pre-reform law with all its faults was a site of conflict, cooperation, and negotiation among diverse individuals seeking to protect and promote their property interests and between private persons and government officials. I show the law to be a key tool for Russia's propertied classes for asserting their own rights against other private individuals and/or against the state. Thus, I reinterpret the relationship between individuals and the administration, modifying the commonly held view of the Nicholaevan bureaucracy as a monolith imposing itself on the tsar's subjects. As the only study of imperial civil law in practice, this dissertation offers unique evidence on the operations of state and society in Russia at the key period of the Great Reforms, as well as establishes a basis for understanding subsequent legal developments.