Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T22:45:25.621Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The State and White-Collar Crime: Saving the Savings and Loans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Kitty Calavita  and
Henry N. Pontell
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

We attempt to make sense of the law enforcement response to the savings and loan debacle and the larger pattern of white-collar crime enforcement of which it is a part. Drawing from government documents and in-depth interviews with federal regulators and enforcement officials, we argue that the current response to savings and loan fraud is unprecedented both in terms of the extensive resources committed and the prosecution of thousands of white-collar offenders. Pointing out that this at first seems inconsistent with the government's relative tolerance of corporate crime cited in other white-collar crime studies, we borrow from state theory to explain this “crackdown.” By bringing together two traditions that have usually remained distinct—white-collar crime research and state theory—this analysis may contribute both to a better understanding of the government response to white-collar crime and to a more empirically grounded approach to the state.

Type
State Theory, Myths of Policing, and Responses to Crime
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , 1994 , pp. 297 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

This research was supported by a grant from the Academic Senate, University of California, Irvine, and under Award #90-IJ-CX-0059 from the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the U.S. Department of Justice.

References

References

Abolafia, Mitchel Y. (1984) “Structured Anarchy: Formal Organization in the Commodities Futures Markets,” in Adler, P. & Adler, P., eds., The Social Dynamics of Financial Markets. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Adler, Robert W., & Lord, Charles (1991) “Environmental Crimes: Raising the Stakes,” 59 George Washington Law Rev. 781.Google Scholar
Althusser, Louis (1971) Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Barnett, Harold (1979) “Wealth, Crime, and Capital Accumulation,” 3 Contemporary Crises 171.Google Scholar
Barnett, Harold (1981) “Corporate Capitalism, Corporate Crime,” 27 Crime & Delinquency 4 (Jan.).Google Scholar
Barnett, Harold (1982) “The Production of Corporate Crime in Corporate Capitalism,” in Wickham, P. & Dailey, T., eds., White Collar and Economic Crime. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Berman, Daniel M. (1978) Death on the Job: Occupational Health and Safety Struggles in the United States. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Block, Fred (1987) Revising State Theory: Essays in Politics and Postindustrialism. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, John, & Geis, Gilbert (1982) “On Theory and Action for Corporate Crime Control,” 28 Crime & Delinquency 292.Google Scholar
Calavita, Kitty (1983) “The Demise of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration: A Case Study in Symbolic Action,” 30 Social Problems 437.Google Scholar
Calavita, Kitty (1986) “Worker Safety, Law, and Social Change: The Italian Case,” 20 Law & Society Rev. 189.Google Scholar
Calavita, Kitty (1992) Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the INS. New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Calavita, Kitty, & Pontell, Henry N. (1990) “‘Heads I Win, Tails You Lose’: Deregulation, Crime, and Crisis in the Savings and Loan Industry,” 36 Crime & Delinquency 309.Google Scholar
Pontell, Henry N. (1991) “‘Other People's Money’ Revisited: Collective Embezzlement in the Savings and Loan and Insurance Industries,” 38 Social Problems 94.Google Scholar
Carson, W. G. (1970) “White Collar Crime and the Enforcement of Factory Legislation,” 10 British J. of Criminology 383.Google Scholar
Carson, W. G. (1982) “Legal Control of Safety on British Offshore Oil Installations,” in Wickham, P. & Dailey, T., eds., White Collar and Economic Crime. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Chambliss, William J., & Seidman, Robert (1982) Law, Order, and Power. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Clinard, Marsall B., & Quinney, Richard (1973) Criminal Behavior Systems. 2d ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Clinard, Marshall B., & Yeager, Peter (1980) Corporate Crime. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Clinard, Marshall B., Yeager, Peter C., Brissette, Jeanne, Petrashek, David, & Harries, Elizabeth (1979) Illegal Corporate Behavior. Washington, DC: National Institute of Law Enforcement & Criminal Justice, Department of Justice.Google Scholar
Coleman, James W. (1985) The Criminal Elite: The Sociology of White Collar Crime. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Cranston, R. (1982) “Regulation and Deregulation: General Issues,” 5 Univ. of New South Wales Law J. 1.Google Scholar
Domhoff, G. William (1967) Who Rules America? Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Domhoff, G. William (1978) The Powers That Be. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Dowie, Mark (1979) “Pinto Madness,” in Skolnick, J. & Currie, E., eds., Crisis in American Institutions. 4th ed. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Ermann, M. David., & Lundman, Richard J. (1978) Corporate and Governmental Deviance: Problems of Organizational Behavior in Contemporary Society. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Lundman, Richard J. (1982) Corporate Deviance. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Friedland, Roger, Piven, Frances Fox, & Alford, Robert R. (1978) “Political Conflict, Urban Structure, and the Fiscal Crisis,” in Ashford, D., ed., Comparing Public Policies: New Concepts and Methods. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Geis, Gilbert (1967) “White Collar Crime: The Heavy Electrical Equipment Antitrust Cases of 1961,” in M. Clinard & R. Quinney, Criminal Behavior Systems: A Typology. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.Google Scholar
Geis, Gilbert (1991) “The Case Study Method in Sociological Criminology,” in Feagin, J. R., Orum, A. M., & Sjoberg, G., eds., A Case for the Case Study. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Sjoberg, G. (1992) “White-Collar Crime: What Is It?” in K. Schlegel & D. Weisburd, White Collar Crime Reconsidered. Boston: Northeast University Press.Google Scholar
Gunningham, Neil (1974) Pollution, Social Interest and the Law. London: M. Robertson.Google Scholar
Gunningham, Neil (1987) “Negotiated Non-Compliance: A Case Study of Regulatory Failure,” 9 Law & Policy 69.Google Scholar
Hagan, John (1985) Modern Criminology: Crime, Criminal Behavior, and Its Control. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.Google Scholar
Hagan, John L., & Nagel, Ilene H. (1982) “White-Collar Crime, White-Collar Time: The Sentencing of White-Collar Offenders in the Southern District of New York,” 20 American Criminal Law Rev. 259.Google Scholar
Hagan, John, & Palloni, Alberto (1983) “The Sentencing of White Collar Offenders before and after Watergate.” Presented at American Sociological Association annual meeting, Detroit.Google Scholar
Hooks, Gregory (1990) “From an Autonomous to a Captured State Agency: The Decline of the New Deal in Agriculture,” 55 American Sociological Rev. 29.Google Scholar
Jackson, Brooks (1988) Honest Graft: Big Money and the American Political Process. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Katz, Jack (1980) “The Social Movement against White-Collar Crime,” 2 Criminology Rev. Yearbook 161.Google Scholar
Kolko, Gabriel (1963) The Triumph of Conservatism. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Kolko, Gabriel (1965) Railroads and Regulations, 1877-1916. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krasner, Stephen D. (1984) “Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics,” 16 Comparative Politics 223.Google Scholar
Levi, Michael (1984) “Giving Creditors the Business: The Criminal Law in Inaction,” 12 International J. of the Sociology of Law 321.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore J. (1969) The End of Liberalism. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Mayer, Martin (1990) The Greatest Ever Bank Robbery: The Collapse of the Savings and Loan Industry. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons.Google Scholar
Miliband, Ralph (1969) The State in Capitalist Society. London: Weidenfield & Nicolson.Google Scholar
O'Connell, William B. (1992) America's Money Trauma: How Washington Blunders Crippled the U.S. Financial System. Winnetka, IL: Conversation Press.Google Scholar
O'Connor, James (1973) The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St. Martin's Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, Frank, & Tombs, S. (1988) “Regulating Corporate Crime: The Case of Health and Safety.” Presented at American Society of Criminology annual meeting, Chicago.Google Scholar
Pilzer, Paul Zane (1989) Other People's Money: The Inside Story of the S&L Mess. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Pizzo, Stephen, Fricker, Mary, & Muolo, Paul (1989) Inside fob: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos (1969) “The Problem of the Capitalist State,” 58 New Left Rev. 67.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos (1973) Political Power and Social Classes, trans. O'Ryan, T.. London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Reichman, Nancy (1991) “Regulating Risky Business: Dilemmas in Security Regulation,” 13 Law & Policy 263.Google Scholar
Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, & Evans, Peter B. (1985) “The State and Economic Transformation: Toward an Analysis of the Conditions Underlying Effective Intervention,” in Evans, P., Rueschemeyer, D., & Skocpol, T., eds., Bringing the State Back in. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Schrager, Laura Shill, & Short, James F. Jr. (1978) “Toward a Sociology of Organizational Crime,” 25 Social Problems 407.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Susan (1980) Thinking about White-Collar Crime: Matters of Conceptualization and Research. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Susan (1984) Wayward Capitalist: Target of the Securities and Exchange Commission. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Shover, Neal, Clelland, Donald A., & Lynxwiler, John (1986) Enforcement or Negotiation: Constructing a Regulatory Bureaucracy. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda, & Finegold, Kenneth (1982) “State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal,” 97 Political Science Q. 255.Google Scholar
Snider, Laureen (1978) “Corporate Crime and Canada: A Preliminary Report,” 20 Canadian J. of Criminology 142.Google Scholar
Snider, Laureen (1991) “The Regulatory Dance: Understanding Reform Processes in Corporate Crime,” 19 International J. of the Sociology of Law 209.Google Scholar
Stryker, Robin (1992) “Government Regulation,” in Borgatta, E. F. & Borgatta, M. L., eds., 2 Encyclopedia of Sociology. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Sutherland, Edwin H. (1949) White Collar Crime. New York: Dryden.Google Scholar
Tillman, Robert, & Pontell, Henry N. (1992) “Is Justice ‘Collar-Blind‘? Punishing Medicaid Provider Fraud,” 30 Criminology 547.Google Scholar
Tucker, Eric (1987) “Making the Workplace ‘Safe’ in Capitalism: The Enforcement of Factory Legislation in Nineteenth Century Ontario.” Presented at Canadian Law & Society Association annual meeting, Hamilton, ON, 3–6 June.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
U.S. Department of Justice (1990) Attacking Savings and Loan Institution Fraud. Report to the President. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Justice (1992a) Attacking Financial Institution Fraud, Fiscal Year 1992 (First Quarterly Report). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Justice (1992b) Attacking Financial Institution Fraud, Fiscal Year 1992, Second Quarterly Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.Google Scholar
U.S. House of Representatives (1987) Adequacy of Federal Efforts to Combat Fraud, Abuse, and Misconduct in Federally Insured Financial Institutions. Hearings before the Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Commerce, Consumer, & Monetary Affairs, 19 Nov. 1987. 100th Cong., 1st sess.Google Scholar
U.S. House of Representatives (1988) Combatting Fraud, Abuse, and Misconduct in the Nation's Financial Institutions: Current Federal Efforts Are Inadequate. House Report No. 100-1088, Committee on Government Operations. 100th Cong., 2d sess.Google Scholar
U.S. House of Representatives (1989) Report of the Special Outside Counsel in the Matter of Speaker James C. Wright, Jr. Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Washington, DC: GPO.Google Scholar
U.S. House of Representatives (1990a) When Are the Savings and Loan Crooks Going to Jail? Hearing before the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions Supervision, Regulation & Insurance of the Committee on Banking, Finance & Urban Affairs, 28 June 1990. 101st Cong., 2d sess.Google Scholar
U.S. House of Representatives (1990b) “Effectiveness of Law Enforcement against Financial Crime.” Field Hearing before the Committee on Banking, Finance & Urban Affairs, Dallas, TX, 11 April 1990. 101st Cong., 2d sess.Google Scholar
U.S. Senate (1992) Efforts to Combat Criminal Financial Institution Fraud. Hearing before the Subcommittee on Consumer & Regulatory Affairs, Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs, 6 Feb. 1992.Google Scholar
Waldman, Michael (1990) Who Robbed America: A Citizen's Guide to the S&L Scandal. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Walters, Vivienne (1985) “The Politics of Occupational Health and Safety: Interviews with Workers' Health and Safety Representatives and Company Doctors,” 22 Canadian Rev. of Sociology & Anthropology 97.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Stanton, & Rothman, Mitchell Lewis (1982) “The Organization as Weapon in White-Collar Crime,” 80 Michigan Law Rev. 1403.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Stanton, Weisburd, David, & Bode, Nancy (1982) “Sentencing the White-Collar Offender: Rhetoric and Reality,” 47 American Sociological Rev. 641.Google Scholar
Yeager, Peter (1986) “Managing Obstacles to Studying Corporate Offences: An Optimistic Assessment.” Presented at 1986 American Society of Criminology annual meetings, Atlanta.Google Scholar
Yeager, Peter (1988) “The Limits of Law: State Regulation of Private Enterprise.” Presented at the 1988 American Society of Criminology annual meetings, Chicago.Google Scholar
Yeager, Peter (1991) The Limits of Law: The Public Regulation of Private Pollution. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Statutes Cited

Comprehensive Thrift and Bank Fraud Prosecution and Taxpayer Recovery Act of 1990.Google Scholar
Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIR-REA).Google Scholar