Model Answer for WJEC Criminology Unit 1: Changing Awareness of Crime, AC1.1 and AC1.2. In my Unit 1 exam I got full marks. Please put into your own words to avoid being penalised/use to help you understand what the question requires or to plan your own answer. Any mention to the brief needs to be ...
Honour crime and white-collar crimes are two crime types that are apparent in the brief that I will therefore be
analysing. However, the brief does also technological crime. Additionally, I will talk about why these two types of crime
may go unreported and use real-life case studies to support my answers.
The first crime made evident by the brief is white-collar crime. White collar crimes are generally non-violent and can
include fraud, tax evasion, and the hacking of bank accounts or other websites that store people’s personal information.
These crimes are typically committed in commercial situations such as banks and stores and are usually in an attempt of
gaining finances. The offenders are usually highly respectable people that work in commercial employment that have
been recruited into committing this crime type by an acquaintance, though they may alternatively be part of an
organised group. These offenders normally prey on vulnerable people that are likely to have the funds to invest into the
scheme, for example recently retired workers with a pension. (Then I referred to the brief, stating who has committed
the crime and why they have, as well as mentioning who the victim is and how they have been affected by the crime).
A case of white-collar crime I have studied is that of Bernie Madoff, who organised one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in
world history. Ponzi schemes are fraudulent schemes that promise high return rates for investors with little risk.
However, what the investors don’t know is that their returns are coming from new investors that have been recruited
into the scheme. Madoff was a businessman who was a member of the Wall Street elite, which earnt him high respect
from his fellow co-workers, even more so after his firm pioneered ‘after-hours’ trading. Madoff’s scheme is thought to
have begun after the 1962 stock market crash, when he told his investors that he had gotten their money out in time
before the value of shares unexpectedly plummeted. However, this was a lie Madoff had told to impress his investors in
order to uphold his reputation. This put Madoff in a tough situation, as he did not have any profit for his investors but
couldn’t ruin his reputation by revealing that he had intentionally lied. Madoff therefore decided to create a subsection
under his legitimate trading business which, overseen by himself, was an investment advisory operation that Madoff
claimed invested money on the behalf of private clients. This was actually the part of Madoff’s business that recruited
new investors whose money would be given to older investors as their returns. Madoff defrauded his victims of a total
estimated to be over $65 billion over what could have been decades. It has been stated by several figures involved in
Madoff’s arrest and trial that his scheme is likely to have continued going undiscovered had he not confessed to his two
sons who then reported him to the authorities. Madoff was found guilty and sentenced to 150 years for multiple stacked
counts of financial fraud, of which he only served 12 years before dying. He was also forced to forfeit %170 billion as
compensation for his victims.
White-collar crimes can remain unreported for a number of personal and social reasons. One example of a personal
reason is that the victim feels a sense of shame and embarrassment and they may not want others (particularly those
that are close to them) to know that they were unable to protect themselves and so to prevent this, they do not report
the crime to the police. Additionally, victims may feel shame if they have borrowed money from friends or family
members to invest into the scheme as a loan, and are embarrassed that it has failed and they have lost the money of
people that had trusted them to repay the loan. Another personal reason is that people who do find out about a white-
collar crime do not feel responsibility or a sense of duty to report it as they are not being immediately affected by it, and
so believe it should be left for someone else to report it. One example of a social reason as to why this crime type can go
unreported is that due to the nature of the crime itself being so complex, it is difficult for people and the authorities to
follow. In addition, offenders of white-collar crimes often hide their schemes by using several complex transactions to
move money across numerous bank accounts, and they may only take such small amounts of money from a victim’s
bank accounts that they do not notice that they have been the victims of fraud. Due to this complexity of the crimes,
there is a lack of knowledge about the crime type, specifically about what being a victim may look like, and what to do if
you notice that a crime has been committed and who or where to report it. There is also a lack of public concern about
white-collar crimes due to the public believing that it is such a complex crime they must be extremely unlikely to be a
victim of one, when this isn’t the case at all. (Then I referred to the brief, describing all the personal, social and cultural
reasons that appear as to why the crime has gone unreported).
A second crime that the brief mentions is honour crime. Honour crimes and honour-based abuse is described as
punishments on people for acts that are deemed to have brought shame on their family or their local community. Such
punishments can include beatings, abductions, female genital mutilation (FGM), harassment, torture, rape and murder.
The victims of honour crimes are typically young girls of school age that come from families of a minority background,
whether that be ethnic or religious. These families are usually part of a small community of the same minority
background as them. The offenders of honour crimes are likely to be known by the victims and are usually an older male
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