White collar crime characteristics and legal implications

¶ … professions promote illegal conduct, and which attributes should inhibit it?

Professions such as law and medicine are enclosed vocations which set barriers to entry through educational requirements and other constraints. Members of the profession are subjected to additional ethical standards above and beyond that of the ordinary public. These standards are usually set by outside entities, such as professional associations as the AMA (American Medical Association), ABA (American Bar Association), and the various ethics committees of universities. It is perfectly possible for certain behaviors not to be illegal but to be unethical, and to result in the expulsion of the professional from such an association. This type of ethical scrupulousness by outside bodies should ideally promote more ethical behavior.

However, there are other aspects of membership in the professions which inhibit rather than promote ethical behavior. The inclusiveness of the professions can create a sense of needing to 'protect one's own' in the face of accusations. A doctor's association might be more sympathetic to physicians accused of malpractice than to the patients. Also, there are behaviors that might not be considered against the tenants of the profession, even though a layperson might be repulsed by them, such as a lawyer defending a client he or she knows is guilty or a doctor creating a control group in a medical experiment that does not benefit from a potentially healing new drug.

Membership in professions also gives professionals additional means and opportunities to act in ways which are unethical and potentially damaging to clients. If someone in a retail situation gives a customer the wrong order, the consequences are minor and can be easily rectified. If a doctor makes a mistake, the consequences can be fatal. If the professional acts in a way that is damaging to the reputation of the profession, this can also violate the trust necessary for all professionals to be functional. Whenever a psychiatrist is publically revealed to be manipulating a client, for example, the entire public often is more suspicious of the therapeutic relationship.

Q2. What do medical crime, legal crime, academic crime, and religious crime, as defined in this text, have in common, and how do they differ?

All of these forms of crime are a violation of the trust that the client places in the hands of a professional to do his or her job without a goal of self-enrichment. In all such crimes, the professional takes advantage of the position in an unethical fashion. There is some overlap in these crimes. For example, a physician might manipulate the results of a research study, just like an academic, or plagiarize the information used in the study without attributing the source. All criminals may take advantage of their position to sexually intimidate clients or engage in improper relationships with the clients. On a less salacious level, members of all of these professions may misrepresent or exaggerate their credentials to clients to gain work.

However, there are also some differences. In the case of medical crimes, serious injuries can be incurred by the victims, if physicians do not take the appropriate measures to promote the health of their patients. In the case of legal crimes, lawyers may not follow the basic guidelines of the law and withhold evidence from the opposing side, misrepresent evidence, and try to gain an unfair advantage for their client in ways which strains the ethics of the legal system and could potentially result in an injustice being done. In the case of academic crimes, although there is less chance of persons in the community being injured in a bodily fashion and the crimes are more cerebral in nature, they are still related to violations of ethical guidelines which could impinge upon the relationship of teacher and student, or fail to properly credit the hard-won work of another professional. Religious crimes, in which members of the clergy act inappropriately, can span everything from voluntary sexual activity, misrepresenting the true beliefs of the clergyman too outright sexual abuse. Regardless, the problem is that because clergy are so trusted, those whom they hurt may not be believed, simply because of the position of the clergyman.

Q3. Which profession's crimes disturb you most, and why?

While all violations are disturbing, the medical crimes disturb me the most. When a doctor violates a person's body, the harm can be irrevocable. No matter how many millions of dollars a family might win in a malpractice suit, nothing can bring back a loved one, or heal the damage from a doctor who acts against the guidelines of the profession. Laypersons lack fundamental medical knowledge, and when they take a pill or agree to a surgery, they are placing their life in a doctor's hands, with the understanding that the physician has their best interests at heart.