The phe­nom­e­non of white-col­lar crime ex­ists in all coun­tries in vary­ing de­grees, and is of par­tic­u­lar con­cern to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries since it un­der­mines eco­nom­ic growth, dis­cour­ages for­eign in­vest­ments and at­tacks the very moral fab­ric of so­ci­ety.

It places a heavy bur­den on the re­sources avail­able to both the pub­lic and the pri­vate sec­tors of the econ­o­my and con­tributes to the ex­ist­ing at­mos­phere of law­less­ness. T&T is no less sus­cep­ti­ble to this type of be­hav­iour. How­ev­er, the fo­cus in this coun­try has been on the tra­di­tion­al blue-col­lar crimes against in­di­vid­u­als–mur­der, as­sault, lar­ce­ny and rob­bery–since it is vis­i­ble and in­volves the loss of per­son­al prop­er­ty or in­jury, or even the death of its vic­tims.

Re­search in this area con­cen­trat­ed on the low­er class of so­ci­ety and var­i­ous the­o­ries have been de­vel­oped to ex­plain the be­hav­iour of such per­pe­tra­tors. This type of of­fend­ing has usu­al­ly been as­so­ci­at­ed with de­pri­va­tion, the break­down of fam­i­ly val­ues and ac­cul­tur­a­tion.

The turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry saw an emer­gence of de­viant be­hav­iour that could not be ex­plained by tra­di­tion­al crim­i­nal the­o­ries. The em­i­nent crim­i­nol­o­gist EH Suther­land in­tro­duced the con­cept of white-col­lar crime in 1939 as "a crime com­mit­ted by a per­son of re­spectabil­i­ty and high so­cial sta­tus in the course of his oc­cu­pa­tion."

The dif­fi­cul­ty with this con­cept was that what is con­sid­ered moral­ly wrong in one seg­ment of so­ci­ety is quite ac­cept­able in an­oth­er. For in­stance, in the past, some peo­ple may have con­sid­ered it un­eth­i­cal to pay a "kick-back" in or­der to se­cure a con­tract, whilst oth­ers viewed it as a way of do­ing busi­ness. Thank­ful­ly, this way of think­ing is chang­ing with the in­tro­duc­tion of le­gal codes in so­ci­eties that ex­press­ly for­bid cer­tain types of be­hav­iour. How­ev­er, leg­is­la­tion is on­ly as ef­fec­tive as its en­force­ment.

White-col­lar crime in­cludes four cru­cial el­e­ments: it is clan­des­tine, it vi­o­lates the of­fend­er's fidu­cia­ry du­ties to the vic­tim or­gan­i­sa­tion, it is com­mit­ted for the pur­pose of di­rect or in­di­rect fi­nan­cial ben­e­fit to the of­fend­er and costs the vic­tim or­gan­i­sa­tion as­set, rev­enue or re­serves (As­so­ci­a­tion of Cer­ti­fied Fraud Ex­am­in­ers 2004).

This makes the crime vir­tu­al­ly in­vis­i­ble and de­tec­tion low. Of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics are un­re­li­able and gen­er­al­ly in­ac­cu­rate, paint­ing an un­true pic­ture of the phe­nom­e­non as a whole. Clas­sic white-col­lar crimes are crimes which in­volve per­son­al gain, at the ex­pense of some oth­er par­ty.

The Na­tion­al White Col­lar Crime Cen­tre's Re­search and Train­ing In­sti­tute (1996) de­fines white col­lar crimes as "il­le­gal or un­eth­i­cal acts that vi­o­lates fidu­cia­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ties or pub­lic trust, com­mit­ted by an in­di­vid­ual or or­gan­i­sa­tion, usu­al­ly dur­ing the course of le­git­i­mate oc­cu­pa­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ty by per­sons of high or re­spectable so­cial sta­tus for per­son­al or or­gan­i­sa­tion­al gains."

Most white-col­lar crimes in­volve in­di­vid­u­als with no pre­vi­ous crim­i­nal record and who con­sid­er them­selves as de­cent, law abid­ing cit­i­zens.

It has been ar­gued that white-col­lar crimes are en­cour­aged in so­ci­eties:

�2 Where there is a cul­ture of com­pe­ti­tion in re­la­tion to per­son­al wealth and sta­tus, with cer­tain oc­cu­pa­tions with­in or­gan­i­sa­tions, which by their very na­ture present spe­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties

�2 Where a par­tic­u­lar cul­ture or sub­cul­ture ex­ists in the or­gan­i­sa­tion and with fi­nan­cial­ly dri­ven or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Geis and Meir (1977) added an­oth­er twist when they said: "White col­lar crime pro­vides and an in­di­ca­tion of the de­gree of hypocrisy present in a so­ci­ety.

Such hypocrisy may be seen as lever­age by means of which the so­ci­ety may be forced to­wards con­gru­ence be­tween its ver­bal com­mit­ments and its ac­tu­al con­duct. In re­gard to white-col­lar crimes, hypocrisy ex­ists when fraud among the low­er class­es are viewed with dis­taste and se­vere­ly pun­ished, while up­per class de­cep­tion is coun­te­nanced and de­fined as noth­ing more than shrewd busi­ness prac­tice."

So what dri­ves a man to com­mit this type of crime?

There is no sin­gle the­o­ry that can ex­plain all types of white-col­lar crimes. How­ev­er, it can be at­trib­uted to three fac­tors, more com­mon­ly known as "the fraud tri­an­gle" of mo­ti­va­tion, op­por­tu­ni­ty and ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion.

1. Mo­ti­va­tion to com­mit white-col­lar crime boils down to one thing: greed.

The of­fend­er is mo­ti­vat­ed to com­mit the act for some form of tan­gi­ble ben­e­fit that can be de­rived con­se­quent­ly, ei­ther to him­self, an as­so­ciate or an or­gan­i­sa­tion he is as­so­ci­at­ed with. These ben­e­fits can be in the form of mon­ey, prop­er­ty or even an IOU which can be cashed in at a lat­er date. Be­fore the of­fend­er com­mits the of­fence, he/she weighs the cost com­pared to the ben­e­fit to be de­rived from the crime.

2. Op­por­tu­ni­ties to com­mit white col­lar crimes are var­ied and de­pend on the po­si­tion the in­di­vid­ual holds with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Re­search in­to con­vict­ed of­fend­ers in the US has shown that white col­lar crim­i­nals are gen­er­al­ly old­er and bet­ter ed­u­cat­ed than the av­er­age blue-col­lar crim­i­nal. The po­si­tion held is usu­al­ly one of trust where the in­di­vid­ual in the or­gan­i­sa­tion has a cer­tain amount of pow­er and in­flu­ence over oth­ers or con­trols in­for­ma­tion that is vi­tal to the op­er­a­tion of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Clear­ly, some pro­fes­sion/oc­cu­pa­tion presents more op­por­tu­ni­ties than oth­ers.

3. Ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion oc­curs when the of­fend­er at­tempts to jus­ti­fy his act by neu­tral­is­ing in his/her mind the il­le­gal­i­ty of it.

The of­fend­er does this through sev­er­al means and makes ex­cus­es such as "no one was harmed," "every­one got a lit­tle some­thing," "the gov­ern­ment would have wast­ed the mon­ey any­way" and more.

Re­port­ing of white-col­lar crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T is low, but not un-no­ticed. It ex­ists at var­i­ous lev­els of so­ci­ety both in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor. How­ev­er, the any al­le­ga­tion of wrong­do­ings made al­most nev­er comes be­fore a crim­i­nal court. It is in­stead as­cribed to poor cor­po­rate gov­er­nance rather than de­lib­er­ate crim­i­nal acts.

The main form of white-col­lar crime that is re­port­ed to the po­lice in this coun­try is con­fined to fraud ac­tiv­i­ties com­mit­ted by em­ploy­ees against em­ploy­ers. How­ev­er, there are many oth­er forms of un­re­port­ed white-col­lar crime and the cost to the State and busi­ness­es can run in­to bil­lions.

Four ar­eas are eas­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able and needs more at­ten­tion with re­spect to white-col­lar crimes.

They are: rev­enue col­lec­tion, cus­toms and ex­cise, pro­cure­ment con­tracts and cor­po­rate malfea­sance.

Crimes that can take place in these ar­eas are un­der­re­port­ing in­come, over­stat­ing ex­pens­es, un­der in­voic­ing im­ports, sub­mis­sion of fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments, and cor­rup­tion/breach of du­ty of care, amongst oth­ers.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly how­ev­er, white-col­lar crimes can flour­ish in this coun­try due to dy­nam­ics such as the lack of po­lit­i­cal will, dif­fu­sion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, lack of prop­er con­trols and guide­lines, in­ad­e­quate over­sight, lack of in­ves­tiga­tive ex­per­tise and re­sources avail­able to in­ves­tiga­tive bod­ies, in­ad­e­quate leg­is­la­tion and the le­gal sys­tem lack of treat­ment of white-col­lar of­fend­ers with the same ab­hor­rence as it does with blue-col­lar crim­i­nals.

To deal with ef­fec­tive­ly with white-col­lar crime, pos­i­tive sig­nals must be sent about the ab­hor­rence of this type of ac­tiv­i­ty. This be­gins at the leg­isla­tive stra­tum, fol­lowed by the em­ploy­ees/man­age­ment of en­ti­ties and trick­les down to the in­ves­tiga­tive arms of the law in this re­gard and fi­nal­ly to the le­gal sys­tem.

Fail­ure to act force­ful­ly and de­ci­sive­ly in deal­ing with this type of crim­i­nal be­hav­iour would re­sult in squan­dered eco­nom­ic and so­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties for this and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.