In particular, the perception that offenses such as violence, theft and burglary tend to be committed by poor people at a higher rate is a great misconception. This is because a person commits a crime not because he is poor but because he is a human being. Certain crimes which respected members of the upper classes of society may commit are often more serious compared to the ones which the poor people commit and they may inflict greater damage on society. Crimes that involve great amounts of money or economic interests, such as bribery and corruption, are among the top crimes that adversely affect the entirety of society. Crimes of this nature are not sufficiently discussed at the academic level or as part of political agenda or debates.

No human being or human-made system is free from corruption or fraud. Contrary to the popular belief, corruption, bribery and fraud are not problems specific to economically underdeveloped countries; on the contrary, these crimes are quite widespread in developed Western democracies, particularly in the US. Broadly speaking, these deviant behaviors, defined as “white-collar crimes,” can also referred to as “crimes of the powerful.” It was Edwin Hardin Sutherland, a US social scientist, who first coined this terminology in the literature of sociology and criminology.

Crimes committed by individuals may vary depending on their social class es. There are certain significant differences between the petty crimes committed by blue-collar workers from lower social classes and the corruption crimes committed by white-collar workers from higher social classes. First, the criminals from lower social classes tend to resort to violence while the offenses committed by white-collar workers do not generally contain violence. Second, there are known and recognized victims of petty crimes while there are no such victims in white-collar crimes,