Sociology

Introduction
Corporations have direct impact on the lives of the public. At the outset, these organizations create employment opportunities for the society members. Besides, the ventures contribute to the economic development through tax remittance. Their management is of great concern to the public and therefore violations by these organizations or individuals in these firms attract as much attention as can be expected. These crimes may include indulgence of firms or individuals acting on behalf of the corporation in violations of laws that are punishable. These violations call for penalties as well as fines. However, corporations are always operating in larges scale and have both financial and political influence therefore these penalties andor fines may be insignificant to their operational costs. This may be one of the factors that have contributed to increased corporate crimes in the U.S. Several legislations have been enacted but with minimal funding from the government and increased globalization, little has been achieved as far as suppressing corporate crimes is concerned. Prevention of these criminal activities requires involvement of all stakeholders including the government but more so the corporate and the behavior and business culture these organizations are nurturing.

Types of corporate crimes
Corporate crimes are varied in nature and may therefore be classified into various types. According to Hartley (2008), corporate crimes are in five groups including Elite crime, Elite deviance, occupational crime, organizational crime as well as political crime. To begin with, Elite crimes entail violations of the law committed by an individual or a group of individuals while carrying out a legitimate occupational and financial activity on behalf of the organization. Elite deviance on the other hand involve violations of the law committed by leaders and or organizations they head that result in either financial, physical or moral harm to the offended. Occupational crime involves violations of the law committed by an individual while carrying out an activity in a legitimate occupation.

Political crime entails violations of the public trust committed by an individual or on behalf of the government driven by the desire of financial gain. Finally, organizational crime involves violations of the law by omission or commission of an individual or groups of individuals in a genuine and recognized organization, which have grave economic or physical effects on workers, customers or the general community (Hartley, 2008). Clinard  Yeager (2005) however classifies crime committed by an individual in hisher own capacity and not acting on behalf of the firm as occupational crime and not corporate crime and vise versa.

Typical Profile of an offender
Corporate crimes cause more harm and deaths compared to other sources of death. This is not publicized hence the public unawareness of the implications of such crimes. Corporate offenders are individuals of middle or high class with high level of education and no history of crime-related activities. The offender studies the existing regulations on crime violations and get involved in sophisticated planning of the crimes. They are always sober and not influenced by drugs in most cases and usually prefer privacy by working alone except when need for corporation arise. The corporate crime offenders take advantage of prevailing opportunities in the work environment such as self-regulation to pursue their ambitions. These offenders rob the economies enormous finances worth billions of dollars.

Causes of corporate crime
Causes of corporate crimes stem from socio- cultural and economic factors, nature and structure of the corporate, competence as well as industries that facilitate crimes in their mode of operations (Gobert  Punch 2003). The duo argue that the standards and conduct of the society especially the business community as well as the government influences to a great extent the behavior of corporate within the same societal setting. They state that its uncommon to find a corporate that enhances transparency in a society that tolerates crime and corruption. The employees come from the same corruption-ridden society and therefore influence the operations of the organization in one way or another. The nature and structure of organizations facilitates crimes by hook or by crook.

To begin with, organizational decisions which are portrayed as unitary may at times prove to be actions of a single segment of the organization. In the corporate are cultural segmentation, rivalries and poor communication as well as institutional disintegration which make it hard to articulate judiciousness and coherence to unitary decision-making process of an organization. Moreover, the pressures and forces exerted on individual members in an organization to meet the demands of the organization may turn them into group actors thereby increasing their chances of indulging in violations even though they might have been individuals of high moral standards. His idea is shared by Clinnard and Yeager (2005) who despite insisting on individual members in the corporate as the key offenders emphasize on the pressures and opportunity in the business that makes the criminal activity inevitable in such corporate. They attribute this to existence of such corporate in an environment characterized by stiff competition. It is important for corporate to adopt strategies which would ensure their survival in the market as well as their growth in the industry. However, it is unfortunate that some corporate get involved in crimes to enhance their chances of survival ( HYPERLINK httpbooks.google.co.kebooksqinauthor22MarshallBarronClinard22clientfirefox-asourcegbs_metadata_rcad11 Clinard   HYPERLINK httpbooks.google.co.kebooksqinauthor22PeterC.Yeager22clientfirefox-asourcegbs_metadata_rcad11 Yeager, 2005).

Gruner (2004) supports this by implying that sources of crime curtail from features of corporate functions which provides an atmosphere for corporate individuals to engage in violations. He further reiterates that corporate employees not only commit offenses for their personal gains but also for the benefit of the corporate. According to Gruner (2004), individuals are responsible for committing offenses while corporate do not. He however argues that the aim of committing corporate crimes is to realize benefits that will help corporate in one way or another. For instance, corporate may be involved in violations to increase revenues or even to minimize expenses associated with law compliance. On the other hand, these crimes may be aimed at personal gains by the individual involved in the violations or at shunning penalties to those individuals for failure to achieve assigned duty. Violations are also possible when one or more agents of the corporate engage in a crime in which case the corporate is liable.

Gobert  Punch (2003) further explain how an organization can be liable to corporate crimes due to incompetence of its board members. Assumption that board members are qualified is always risky since some of these individuals may be lacking certain expertise to address organizational problems as witnessed in the Enron collapse thereby leading to corporate crimes. Finally, the duo explain how the coercive nature of industries facilitate the corporate crimes by individual members as earlier elaborated by Clinnard and Yeager (2005) who cited pressures from the corporate as the reasons why members indulge in corporate crimes.

Conclusion
Corporate have direct impact on the lives of the society and therefore high degree of transparency and expertise should be enhanced in its management to minimize cases of corporate crimes which have not only robbed the economy of its resources but have also caused deaths in many circumstances. Stringent legislative measures should also be enacted to provide stiffer penalties thereby controlling the up surging corporate crime rates.