ABSTRACT
The argument has been made that business and professional men commit crimes which should be brought within the scope of the theories of criminal behavior. In order to secure evidence as to the prevalence of such white-collar crimes, an analysis was made of the decisions by courts and commissions against the seventy largest industrial and mercantile corporations in the United States under four types of laws. These are antitrust, false advertising, National Labor Relations, and infringement of patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Three factors assist in explaining this differential implementation of the law: the status of the businessman, the trend away from punishment, and the relatively unorganized resentment of the public against white-collar criminals. White-collar crime is similar to juvenile delinquency in respect to the differential implementation of the law. In both cases, the procedures of the criminal law are modified so that the stigma of crime will not attach to the offenders.
