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

collar crime.1
NSfK’s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
As everyone knows, white collar crime has been relatively neglected in the study of crime and
deviance. The main focus of study - as well as that of control policy - has been on traditional
street-crime.This is the case in Finland as well. Every now and then, however, it becomes
fashionable to talk about white collar crime as a public problem2. In Finland there was a
phase of concern in the beginning of the eighties when several big cases on white collar came
to daylight and a boom of prosecuting white collar criminals emerged. A lot of the charges
were dismissed, because of the complicated nature of the cases, and because of the
inexperience of police and procecutors. In 1983 our President Koivisto gave critisized the
public procecutors for procecuting too easily in cases of white collar crime. After that, the
thereshold to prosecute white collar criminals became higher. All in all, the debate concerning
stricter control faded away towards the end of the eighties.
After the long period of economic growth and excessive consumption in the 1980´s, a period
of depression began in Finland in the beginning of the nineties. The development of the GNP
began to decline and unemployment began to increase. There was a rapid increase in the
number of bankruptcy petitions.3 In 1992 there was the so-called 'Black Thursday', when
several banks published simultaneously their unprofitable part-year reports and several big
companies became bankrupt. During the depression, several illegal acts committed by bank
directors, politicians and businessmen were revealed, and simultaneously excessive govermental
monetary support was granted to banks, which have in the last few years experienced
considerable problems partly because of the losses caused by dishonest businessmen and bank
executives.
The decision makers' attention was once again to economic crime and one of the key profit
areas within the profit plan of the police in 1993-96 was to prevent economic crime. In order
to achieve the objectives set in the plan, a project was launched in the chief management of
the police, to draw up a concrete strategy on the measures required by the effective prevention
of economic crime.
In 1993 a research was funded by the ministery of interiors on the economic damages caused
by white collar crime. Prior to this researchproject, there was no comprehensive statistics
available of economic crime as we defined it in this research (committed in an organizational
framework).4
The main task was to assess the extent of the economic/white collar crime crime and the
amount of losses of the cases that were sentenced. Also the problems of investigation of the
police were mapped.
1 At this point I have not had the possibility to systematically gather extensive data on the exact amounts of
complaints or lawsuits against the police. A preliminary questionnare concerning the experiences of the police in
this matter was performed to all investigators dealing with white collar crime. In addition I have discussed the
matter with numerous investigators. A case study was completed on compaints made against one person in
charge of inquiries, as it was seen as an interesting ‘exaggerated stereotype’ of the phenomenon.
2 On the processes of defining public problems, see e.g. Gusfield: ‘The Culture of public problems’ (1981).
3 The increase of banctrupsy petitions began several years earlier at the same time when the financial markets
were liberalized (deregulated). Matti Viren, Velkakierre No. 13,1995. p.33.
4 Laitinen-Alvesalo: Talouden Varjopuoli (The dark side of economy), (1994).
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