Organised Crime & Crime Prevention - what works? - Scandinavian ...

NSfK’s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
There is a notion as well, that some investigators have become almost intimitated and more
careful in e.g. using coercive measures in their investigation:
“Some investigators use all their energy in building the case so that they can be sure
that they can not be claimed to have done anything wrong....the majority of their time goes -
not into investigating the crime - but into constructing a buffer against complaints“19
4. Concluding remarks and questions
Is the effective control of white collar crime only a political makeshift? Nils Christie has
analysed “the suitable enemy“, by which he means unwanted conditions that are seen as
suitable to be raised as “social problems“. According to Christie drugs are a perfect enemy.
The enemy needs to be hated by the population. It ought to be seen as dangerous, often
inhuman. Good enemies are those that never die. He claimes that economic crime, is “perfect,
indispensible, AND completely useless if taken seriously.“ Because the good enemy must be
relatievly small, it must be without great political power. He questiones the possibility of law
and order campaings against white collar criminals: “Can we imagine the same rules of the
game than e.g. in drugs: (Provocation, infiltration the police pretending to be businessmen,
bugging of telephones, payment to informers, the complete stripping by customs officers of
business executives, and intimate body searches)?”.20
Is the control of white collar crime, and the consideration of it as a “problem“ permanent, or
is it, once again, an acute political need that has aroused the intesnified control. According to
Christie white collar crime is indispensible particularly to goverments slightly to the left.
“But this enemy is a good one only when kept at a distance and on an abstract level. Clearly
exposed, it might become dangerous.“21 It has been claimed that in the end of the day, there
will always be more political interest is more likely to be exerted in blocking or derailing
white collar crime investigations, and that police can operate effectively only to the extent
that they are free from political influence.22 Is in fact control the control of white collar crime
more effective than the control of it ?
Christie´s analysis is quite relevant if one looks at the abovementioned trends in Finland: the
elites representative´s reactions can be seen as efforts to water down their control. It is
interesting how Sykes´ and Matza´s techniques of neutralazation can be found in the reactions
of of white collar criminals. As Matza stated: “The criminal law, more so than any
comparable system of norms, acknowledges and states the principled grounds under which an
actor may claim exemption. The law contains seeds of its own neutralization“.23 Denial of
responsibility, denial of injury, denial of the victim, condemnation of the condemners and
appeal to higher loyalities are all beautifully present in the abovementioned rhetorics of white
collar criminals.
It has been suggested that in fact techniques of rationalization and neutralization can be used
to explain white collar criminality, how they become lawbreakers. An Important part in the
18 Comments of several white collar crime investigators in the questionnaire
19 Comment of a white collar crime investigator (interview) 25.11.97. There is an interesting analogy here to
journalists who have been subjected to several law suits (white collar criminals´); they too have become careful
when writing about them.
20 Amusingly enough, one key area of Finnish policing in 1998 is drugs.
21 Christie in van Swaaningen: Abolitionism (1986), p. 42-54
22 Friedrichs 1996, 272.
23 Matza (1964), p. 61.
96