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8.2 Types of Crime

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Describe the major aspects of homicide.

Discuss evidence indicating that white-collar crime is more serious than street crime.

Explain the major issues raised by the concept of consensual crime.

Many types of crime exist. Criminologists commonly group crimes into several major categories: (1)
violent crime; (2) property crime; (3) white-collar crime; (4) organized crime; and (5) consensual or
victimless crime. Within each category, many more specific crimes exist. For example, violent crime
includes homicide, aggravated and simple assault, rape and sexual assault, and robbery, while property
crime includes burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Because a full discussion of the many
types of crime would take several chapters or even an entire book or more, we highlight here the most
important dimensions of the major categories of crime and the issues they raise for public safety and
crime control.

Violent Crime

Even if, as our earlier discussion indicated, the news media exaggerate the problem of violent crime, it
remains true that violent crime plagues many communities around the country and is the type of crime
that most concerns Americans. The news story that began this chapter reminds us that violent crime is
all too real for too many people; it traps some people inside their homes and makes others afraid to let
their children play outside or even to walk to school. Rape and sexual assault are a common concern for
many women and leads them to be more fearful of being victimized than men: In the 2011 Gallup poll
mentioned earlier, 37 percent of women said they worried about being sexually assaulted, compared to
only 6 percent of men (see Figure 8.1 "Gender and Worry about Being Sexually Assaulted (Percentage
Saying They Worry “Frequently” or “Occasionally”)").

Figure 8.1 Gender and Worry about Being Sexually Assaulted (Percentage Saying They Worry
“Frequently” or “Occasionally”)

Source: Data from Maguire, K. (Ed.). (2011). Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics. Retrieved from
http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook.
Research on violent crime tends to focus on homicide and on rape and sexual assault. Homicide, of
course, is considered the most serious crime because it involves the taking of a human life. As well,
homicide data are considered more accurate than those for other crimes because most homicides come
to the attention of the police and are more likely than other crimes to lead to an arrest. For its part, the
focus on rape and sexual assault reflects the contemporary women’s movement’s interest in these
related crimes beginning in the 1970s and the corresponding interest of criminologists, both female and
male, in the criminal victimization of women.

Certain aspects of homicide are worth noting. First, although some homicides are premeditated, most in
fact are relatively spontaneous and the result of intense emotions like anger, hatred, or jealousy (Fox,
Levin, & Quinet, 2012).Fox, J. A., Levin, J., & Quinet, K. (2012). The will to kill: Making sense of senseless
murder. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Two people may begin arguing for any number of
reasons, and things escalate. A fight may then ensue that results in a fatal injury, but one of the
antagonists may also pick up a weapon and use it. About 25–50 percent of all homicides are victim-
precipitated, meaning that the eventual victim is the one who starts the argument or the first one to
escalate it once it has begun.

Second, and related to the first aspect, most homicide offenders and victims knew each other before the
homicide occurred. Indeed, about three-fourths of all homicides involve nonstrangers, and only one-
fourth involve strangers. Intimate partners (spouses, ex-spouses, and current and former partners) and
other relatives commit almost 30 percent of all homicides (Messner, Deane, & Beaulieu, 2002).Messner,
S. F., Deane, G., & Beaulieu, M. (2002). A log-multiplicative association model for allocating homicides
with unknown victim-offender relationships. Criminology, 40, 457–479. Thus although fear of a deadly
attack by a stranger dominates the American consciousness, we in fact are much more likely on average
to be killed by someone we know than by someone we do not know.

Third, about two-thirds of homicides involve firearms. To be a bit more precise, just over half involve a
handgun, and the remaining firearm-related homicides involve a shotgun, rifle, or another
undetermined firearm. Combining these first three aspects, then, the most typical homicide involves
nonstrangers who have an argument that escalates and then results in the use of deadly force when one
of the antagonists uses a handgun.

Fourth, most homicides (as most violent crime in general) are intraracial, meaning that they occur within
the same race; the offender and victim are of the same race. For single offender/single victim homicides
where the race of both parties is known, about 90 percent of African American victims are killed by
African American offenders, and about 83 percent of white victims are killed by white offenders (Federal
Bureau of Investigation, 2011).Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2011). Crime in the United States, 2010.
Washington, DC: Federal Author. Although whites fear victimization by African Americans more than by
whites, whites in fact are much more likely to be killed by other whites than by African Americans. While
African Americans do commit about half of all homicides, most of their victims are also African
American.

Fifth, males commit about 90 percent of all homicides and females commit only 10 percent. As we
discuss in Section 3.1 "Racial and Ethnic Inequality: A Historical Prelude", males are much more likely
than women to commit most forms of crime, and this is especially true for homicide and other violent
crime.

Sixth, the homicide rate is much higher in large cities than in small towns. In 2010, the homicide rate
(number of homicides per 100,000 population) in cities with a population at or over 250,000 was 10.0
percent, compared to only 2.5 percent in towns with a population between 10,000 and 24,999 (see
Figure 8.2 "Population Size and Homicide Rate, 2010"). Thus the risk for homicide is four times greater in
large cities than in small towns. While most people in large cities certainly do not die from homicide,
where we live still makes a difference in our chances of being victimized by homicide and other crime.

Figure 8.2 Population Size and Homicide Rate, 2010

Source: Data from Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2011). Crime in the United States, 2010.
Washington, DC: Author.

Finally, the homicide rate rose in the late 1980s and peaked during the early 1990s before declining
sharply until the early 2000s and then leveling off and declining a bit further since then. Although debate
continues over why the homicide rate declined during the 1990s, many criminologists attribute the
decline to a strong economy, an ebbing of gang wars over drug trafficking, and a decline of people in the
15–25 age group that commits a disproportionate amount of crime (Blumstein & Wallman,
2006).Blumstein, A., & Wallman, J. (Eds.). (2006). The crime drop in America (2nd ed.). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Some observers believe rising imprisonment rates also made a difference,
and we return to this issue later in this chapter.
Rape and sexual assault were included in Chapter 4 "Gender Inequality"’s discussion of violence against
women as a serious manifestation of gender inequality. As that chapter noted, it is estimated that one-
third of women on the planet have been raped or sexually assaulted, beaten, or physically abused in
some other way (Heise, Ellseberg, & Gottemoeller, 1999).Heise, L., Ellseberg, M., & Gottemoeller, M.
(1999). Ending violence against women. Population Reports, 27(4), 1–44. While it is tempting to
conclude that such violence is much more common in poor nations than in a wealthy nation like the
United States, we saw in Chapter 4 "Gender Inequality" that violence against women is common in this
nation as well. Like homicide, about three-fourths of all rapes and sexual assaults involve individuals
who know each other, not strangers.

Property Crime

As noted earlier, the major property crimes are burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson. These
crimes are quite common in the United States and other nations and, as Table 8.1 "Number of Crimes:
Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), 2010" indicated, millions
occur annually in this country. Many Americans have installed burglar alarms and other security
measures in their homes and similar devices in their cars and SUVs. While property crime by definition
does not involve physical harm, it still makes us concerned, in part because it touches so many of us.
Although property crime has in fact declined along with violent crime since the early 1990s, it still is
considered a major component of the crime problem, because it is so common and produces losses of
billions of dollars annually.

Much property crime can be understood in terms of the roles and social networks of property criminals.
In this regard, many scholars distinguish between amateur theft and professional theft. Most property
offenders are amateur offenders: They are young and unskilled in the ways of crime, and the amount
they gain from any single theft is relatively small. They also do not plan their crimes and instead commit
them when they see an opportunity for quick illegal gain. In contrast, professional property offenders
tend to be older and quite skilled in the ways of crime, and the amount they gain from any single theft is
relatively large. Not surprisingly, they often plan their crimes well in advance. The so-called cat burglar,
someone who scales tall buildings to steal jewels, expensive artwork, or large sums of money, is perhaps
the prototypical example of the professional property criminals. Many professional thieves learn how to
do their crimes from other professional thieves, and in this sense they are mentored by the latter just as
students are mentored by professors, and young workers by older workers.

White-Collar Crime

If you were asked to picture a criminal in your mind, what image would you be likely to think of first: a
scruffy young male with a scowl or sneer on his face, or a handsome, middle-aged man dressed in a
three-piece business suit? No doubt the former image would come to mind first, if only because violent
crime and property crime dominate newspaper headlines and television newscasts and because many of
us have been victims of violent or property crime. Yet white-collar crime is arguably much more harmful
than street crime, both in terms of economic loss and of physical injury, illness, and even death.

What exactly is white-collar crime? The most famous definition comes from Edwin Sutherland (1949, p.
9),Sutherland, E. H. (1949). White collar crime. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. a sociologist
who coined the term in the 1940s and defined it as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and
high social status in the course of his occupation.” Sutherland examined the behavior of the seventy
largest US corporations and found that they had violated the law hundreds of times among them.
Several had engaged in crimes during either World War I or II; they provided defective weapons and
spoiled food to US troops and even sold weapons to Germany and other nations the United States was
fighting.

Although white-collar crime as studied today includes auto shop repair fraud and employee theft by
cashiers, bookkeepers, and other employees of relatively low status, most research follows Sutherland’s
definition in focusing on crime committed by people of “respectability and high social status.” Thus
much of the study of white-collar crime today focuses on fraud by physicians, attorneys, and other
professionals and on illegal behavior by executives of corporations designed to protect or improve
corporate profits (corporate crime).

In the study of professional fraud, health-care fraud stands out for its extent and cost (Rosoff, Pontell, &
Tillman, 2010).Rosoff, S. M., Pontell, H. N., & Tillman, R. (2010). Profit without honor: White collar crime
and the looting of America (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Health-care fraud is thought
to amount to more than $100 billion per year, compared to less than $20 billion for all property crime
combined. For example, some physicians bill Medicare and private insurance for services that patients
do not really need and may never receive. Medical supply companies sometimes furnish substandard
equipment. To compensate for the economic loss it incurs, health-care fraud drives up medical expenses
and insurance costs. In this sense, it steals from the public even though no one ever breaks into your
house or robs you at gunpoint.

Although health-care and other professional fraud are serious, corporate crime dwarfs all other forms of
white-collar crime in the economic loss it incurs and in the death, injury, and illness it causes. Corporate
financial crime involves such activities as fraud, price fixing, and false advertising. The Enron scandal in
2001 involved an energy corporation whose chief executives exaggerated profits. After their fraud and
Enron’s more dire financial state were finally revealed, the company’s stock plummeted and it finally
went bankrupt. Its thousands of workers lost their jobs and pensions, and investors in its stock lost
billions of dollars. Several other major corporations engaged in (or strongly suspected of doing so)
accounting fraud during the late 1990s and early 2000s, but Enron was merely the most notorious
example of widespread scandal that marked this period.

While corporate financial crime and corruption have cost the nation untold billions of dollars in this and
earlier decades, corporate violence—actions by corporations that kill or maim people or leave them ill—
is even more scandalous. The victims of corporate violence include corporate employees, consumers of
corporate goods, and the public as a whole. Annual deaths from corporate violence exceed the number
of deaths from homicide, and illness and injury from corporate violence affect an untold number of
people every year.

Employees of corporations suffer from unsafe workplaces in which workers are exposed to hazardous
conditions and chemicals because their companies fail to take adequate measures to reduce or
eliminate this exposure. Such exposure may result in illness, and exposure over many years can result in
death. According to a recent estimate, more than 50,000 people die each year from workplace exposure
(American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations [AFL-CIO], 2010),American
Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). (2010). Death on the job: The
toll of neglect. Washington, DC: Author. a figure about three times greater than the number of annual
homicides. About 1,500 coal miners die each year from black lung disease, which results from the
breathing of coal dust; many and perhaps most of these deaths would be preventable if coal mining
companies took adequate safety measures (G. Harris, 1998).Harris, G. (1998, April 19). Despite laws,
hundreds are killed by black lung. The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), p. A1. In another example, the
asbestos industry learned during the 1930s that exposure to asbestos could cause fatal lung disease and
cancer. Despite this knowledge, asbestos companies hid evidence of this hazard for more than three
decades: They allowed their workers to continue to work with asbestos and marketed asbestos as a fire
retardant that was widely installed in schools and other buildings. More than 200,000 asbestos workers
and members of the public either have already died or are expected to die from asbestos exposure;
most or all of these deaths could have been prevented if the asbestos industry had acted responsibly
when it first discovered it was manufacturing a dangerous product (Lilienfeld, 1991).Lilienfeld, D. E.
(1991). The silence: The asbestos industry and early occupational cancer research—a case study.
American Journal of Public Health, 81, 791–800.

Unsafe products also kill or maim consumers. One of the most notorious examples of deaths from an
unsafe product involved the Ford Pinto, a car first sold in the early 1970s that was vulnerable to fire and
explosion when hit from behind in a minor rear-end collision (Cullen, Maakestad, & Cavender,
2006).Cullen, F. T., Maakestad, W. J., & Cavender, G. (2006). Corporate crime under attack: The fight to
criminalize business violence. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson. Ford knew before the Pinto went on the market
that its gas tank was unusually vulnerable in a rear-end collision and determined it would take about $11
per car to fix the problem. It then did a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it would cost more to
fix the problem or instead to settle lawsuits after Pinto drivers and passengers died or were burned and
injured in rear-end collisions. This analysis indicated that Ford would save about $87 million if it did not
fix the problem and instead paid out compensation after Pinto drivers and passengers died or got
burned. Because Ford made this decision, about five hundred people eventually died in Pinto rear-end
collisions and many others were burned.

The toll of white-collar crime, both financial and violent, is difficult to estimate, but by all accounts it
exceeds the economic loss and death and injury from all street crime combined. White-collar crime is
thought to involve an annual economic loss of more than $700 billion annually from corporate fraud,
professional fraud, employee theft, and tax evasion and an annual toll of at least 100,000 deaths from
workplace-related illness or injury, unsafe products, and preventable environmental pollution. These
figures compare to an economic loss of less than $20 billion from property crime and a death toll of
about 17,000 from homicide (Barkan, 2012).Barkan, S. E. (2012). Criminology: A sociological
understanding (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. By any measure, the toll of white-collar
crime dwarfs the toll of street crime, even though the latter worries us much more than white-collar
crime. Despite the harm that white-collar crime causes, the typical corporate criminal receives much
more lenient punishment, if any, than the typical street criminal (Rosoff et al., 2010).Rosoff, S. M.,
Pontell, H. N., & Tillman, R. (2010). Profit without honor: White collar crime and the looting of America
(5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Organized Crime

Organized crime refers to criminal activity by groups or organizations whose major purpose for existing
is to commit such crime. When we hear the term “organized crime,” we almost automatically think of
the so-called Mafia, vividly portrayed in the Godfather movies and other films, that comprises several
highly organized and hierarchical Italian American “families.” Although Italian Americans have certainly
been involved in organized crime in the United States, so have Irish Americans, Jews, African Americans,
and other ethnicities over the years. The emphasis on Italian domination of organized crime overlooks
these other involvements and diverts attention from the actual roots of organized crime.

What are these roots? Simply put, organized crime exists and even thrives because it provides goods
and/or services that the public demands. Organized crime flourished during the 1920s because it was all
too ready and willing to provide an illegal product, alcohol, that the pubic continued to demand even
after Prohibition began. Today, organized crime earns its considerable money from products and
services such as illegal drugs, prostitution, pornography, loan sharking, and gambling. It also began long
ago to branch out into legal activities such as trash hauling and the vending industry.
Government efforts against organized crime since the 1920s have focused on arrest, prosecution, and
other law-enforcement strategies. Organized crime has certainly continued despite these efforts. This
fact leads some scholars to emphasize the need to reduce public demand for the goods and services that
organized crime provides. However, other scholars say that reducing this demand is probably a futile or
mostly futile task, and they instead urge consideration of legalizing at least some of the illegal products
and services (e.g., drugs and prostitution) that organized crime provides. Doing so, they argue, would
weaken the influence of organized crime.

Consensual Crime

Consensual crime (also called victimless crime) refers to behaviors in which people engage voluntarily
and willingly even though these behaviors violate the law. Illegal drug use, discussed in Chapter 7
"Alcohol and Other Drugs", is a major form of consensual crime; other forms include prostitution,
gambling, and pornography. People who use illegal drugs, who hire themselves out as prostitutes or
employ the services of a prostitute, who gamble illegally, and who use pornography are all doing so
because they want to. These behaviors are not entirely victimless, as illegal drug users, for example, may
harm themselves and others, and that is why the term consensual crime is often preferred over
victimless crime. As just discussed, organized crime provides some of the illegal products and services
that compose consensual crime, but these products and services certainly come from sources other than
organized crime.

This issue aside, the existence of consensual crime raises two related questions that we first
encountered in Chapter 7 "Alcohol and Other Drugs". First, to what degree should the government ban
behaviors that people willingly commit and that generally do not have unwilling victims? Second, do
government attempts to ban such behaviors do more good than harm or more harm than good?
Chapter 7 "Alcohol and Other Drugs"’s discussion of these questions focused on illegal drugs, and in
particular on the problems caused by laws against certain drugs, but similar problems arise from laws
against other types of consensual crime. For example, laws against prostitution enable pimps to control
prostitutes and help ensure the transmission of sexual diseases because condoms are not regularly
used.

Critics of consensual crime laws say we are now in a new prohibition and that our laws against illegal
drugs, prostitution, and certain forms of gambling are causing the same problems now that the ban on
alcohol did during the 1920s and, more generally, cause more harm than good. Proponents of these
laws respond that the laws are still necessary as an expression of society’s moral values and as a means,
however imperfect, of reducing involvement in harmful behaviors.
KEY TAKEAWAYS

Most homicides are committed for relatively emotional, spontaneous reasons and between people who
knew each other beforehand.

White-collar crime involves more death, injury, and economic loss than street crime, but the
punishment of white-collar crime is relatively weak.

Consensual crime raises two related issues: (a) To what extent should the government prohibit people
from engaging in behavior in which there are no unwilling victims, and (b) do laws against consensual
crime do more good than harm or more harm than good?

FOR YOUR REVIEW

If homicide is a relatively emotional, spontaneous crime, what does that imply for efforts to use harsh
legal punishment, including the death penalty, to deter people from committing homicide?

Do you think consensual crimes should be made legal? Why or why not?

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