Sociology of Crime

Clips from Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Prof. Baker — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:58:13 +0000

Kalyfornyah – part 1 & 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVOTG_jL8o8&feature=PlayList&p=04BAE9B96F17CE61&index=11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiPE0r3Mj9c&feature=PlayList&p=04BAE9B96F17CE61&index=12

Give Me the Blank Checks, Or Else

aaroncatlin15 — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:07:23 +0000

This article was featured in the New York Times on April 22nd, 2009 on page A22 of the New York eduition. This article gives a story about two business partners who hoped to open a bar room in downtown New York City. The hopes of these two men slowly slipped away during the financial crisis and eventually owed the leasing company $267,000 in back rent. When the two learned of their debt they franticly tried to find out how to not only repay their debt but also how to repair their dream of opening their bar room. In an effort to gain this tremendous amount of money the business partners, Schwartz and Giamongas, conspiricied with SoHo security officer Gogoladze. This conspiricy consisted of a planned kidnapping of a real estate agent. The group kidnapped this man then forced him to give them seven signed blank checks that they would hope to provide a relief of debt.

This story is interesting for a few reasons. First this article is very interesting showing that “stranger” danger still exists. The victim, a real estate agent, had no connection to the offenders. This is a very unlikely circumstance that occurs at very low rates according to class discussion. Antother intersesting topic about this crime is that the offenders were of relatively high ages for criminal acts. The mean age of the three offenders was 46 years old with two men being 35 and the eldest being 70 years old. As we’ve learned in class many offenders tend to “phase” out of crime but these offenders seem to break the pattern. Also the very controversial inclusion that the three offenders were recent immigrants. This tries to point the finger away from American citizens and aims to provide the public with a “black sheep” that they can blame their problems on. All three of the offenders were either on a work visa or alledgely illegal immigrants.

Although the offenders only got away with cashing one of these checks for $25,000 they will certainly being paying this sum back and serving time for their actions. However repayment and incarceration won’t fix this problem thats facing America. Today more and more Americans are weary of job loss so these cases may become more frequent. This common belief is what I feel that this article tries to target. By showing these people as illegal immigrants and “Aliens” of immigration it tends to give the imagery that Americans wouldn’t ever commit an act like this. At a time of hardship the media tries to pull the population together under one united cause and the attack of immigrants is most likely a source that we will utilize considering the recent development of a fence between Texas and Mexico and an even more recent development of swine flu that’s continuely connected to “Mexican Dirtyness”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/nyregion/22arrest.html?_r=1

Rent Dispute Was Scary, Officials Say, Charging 3

jschmit1 — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:07:15 +0000

This article from the New York times describes a strange and frightening situation in which a man was kidnapped, threatened, and coerced into handing over blank checks to his assailants. The back story behind the crime was that a bar owner who was having difficulty paying his rent requested that a rather sizeable man go and kidnap this agent and they would then threaten him with torture and possible death in order to steal his checks. Police have aprehended the accused parties and they are now being charged with kidnapping and robbery.

This account seems similar to the concept of occupational crime described in Coleman’s book in that the crime was committed in order to further the business. However, there should be question here of how respectable or “white-collar” the profession involved is. This leads to a question that Coleman addresses; just how white-collar does the crime have to be in order to be concidered as such? This crime seems to involve a group of thugs extorting an innocent man in order to pay their overdue and expensive rent, but it seems possible to argue that the crime could fall under the category of an organizational crime. After all, it was perpetrated in order to allow for the criminals to pay their rent and open a bar.

The most important distinction here is that the crime was not perpetrated during ordinary business transactions. The parties involved where not all members of the company and, for the most part, the purposes served by the crime are far more individual than they would be in Coleman’s examples of organizational crime. While this is an interesting case, it is a much better example of desperate men robbing a person in an attempt to break even. So, I would have to say this isn’t exactly white-collar crime by Coleman’s definition but it does blur the lines between white-collar crime and ordinary street crime. This is a problematic factor in Coleman’s conceptualization of white-collar crime and he acknowledges it. When does a street criminal recieve enough recognition and respect that the crime becomes a white-collar one?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/nyregion/22arrest.html?_r=1

2 Get Life Without Parole for Paid Killing in Queens

kbolton — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:07:07 +0000

This article looks at the crime committed by Mazoltuv Borukhova and Mikhail Mallayev who were both sentenced to life in prison without parole on Tuesday. The victim’s wife was convicted of ordering Mr. Mallayev to kill her husband. As the article begins readers are informed that Mr. Malakov (thirty four) was murdered in front of the couple’s four year old daughter at a playground in Forest Hills. This is a reflection of the news scripts from Gillian and Iyengar from our class notes on February 2nd; the media first announces that a crime has occurred, then transports to the scene and gives a description of the setting, and then identifies the suspects and the efforts of the law enforcement (court sentencing). Other notes from that day discuss those patterns of reporting which occur in criminal acts; first involving crime and criminals Gilliam and Iyengar also found that our media mainly portrays violent criminal acts and disregards other crime such as white-collar crime. They found that 83% of these new stories are dedicated to violent crime and that people of color are dangerous with data showing that whites account for 41% of all perpetrators while people of color are 59% of perpetrators. In this particular case we see patterns of reporting in relations to victims; they say that anyone can be a victim at any time and that the ideal victim is a respectable person engaged in an innocent activity. Mr. Malakov did nothing harmful to justify his murder and his wife was only mad after a judge awarded him temporary custody of their daughter. Since this involved a case of homicide the courts have to look at the definitions which vary by state; in the traditional definition first degree would be with malice, intentional, and premeditated. Specifically in New York first degree murder is only involving special circumstances which could be murder of a police officer, judge, fireman, etc and second degree murder is with malice, intentional, and premeditated (class notes, March 16^th). From class notes on March 4^th we looked at the role that weapons play in crime and it was reported that in 21% of all violent crime weapons are used, and one-third of those weapons are firearms mainly handguns, strangers are also more likely to use weapons than non- strangers. On that same day we found out that men are much more likely to be involved in violent crimes (except for rape) as women only account for 15% of violent crime.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/nyregion/22dentist.html?_r=1

Craigslist killer strikes again in R.I.

MLubow — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:06:51 +0000

This article is about the attempted robbery of a woman offering lap dances in a hotel in Rhode Island. The man tied the woman up but thankfully her husband came into the room before anything could happen. The assailant fled and the husband chased him but was unsuccessful. This attack is believed to be committed by the Craigslist Killer who is the suspect in a murder case and a robbery.
I actually found this article in a different way. My mom had told me about the Craigsist killer so I googled it to learn more and found this article. My mom told me because this past summer I had replied to a bunch of job opportunities I found on Craigslist and my mom was saying that she didn’t want me to do that anymore. This killer has made her extremely worried. This reminds me of the panic that crime can cause which we discussed in class. I’m sure my mom is not alone in her worries and I bet many other people will be deterred from using Craigslist in the future. Craiglist is a very popular site and I would be interested to see how this case affects how many people will visit their site in the future which would be a good testament to whether it caused a panic or not. Also I think there was another murder recently unrelated to these where a woman responded to a babysitting ad on Craigslist and was then murdered and I wonder if this guy got the idea from him. The idea of killing someone who responds to an ad as opposed to someone who posts an ad is much scarier to me because that is what I did and for it to be so random ads another level of fear. I think it is interesting though how much scarier things are the more directly they are related to ones life. Like as soon as I found out this man was responding to masseuse ads, etc. I was immediately less scared because I thought “Oh I would never post a thing like that.” But the babysitting case was in the realm of things I have and would do so it feels way more real to me.
Another thing that interests me is that the killer only murdered one of the victims, robbed from the other, and attempted to rob from the third. Since this article is about the attempted robbery I don’t know a whole lot about the other cases but I would like to know the details of the murder case because it seems like it was not quite the pattern. I wonder if the woman was maybe fighting him and he killed her because it seems weird to me to have the mid set to kill just one victim and not the others. Because this case is receiving so much publicity and because the police have some pictures of the man I feel fairly confident that he will be caught.

Woman’s body found in Paterson street

rreiner — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:13:48 +0000

http://www.northjersey.com/news/crimeandcourts/Womans_body_found_in_Paterson_street.html

This article is about the investigation of a murder of a Paterson, NJ woman. The woman was found in the middle of the street at 5 am.

As of yet the victims identity has not be released to the public. The article does not reveal whether the victim lived on the residential street that she was found. Also not revealed is cause of death although police cite “suspicious circumstances”. Police also have not revealed whether they have any suspects in custody.

Paterson, NJ, located on the border of Passaic County and Bergen County (residents of the latter county are mostly of upper-middle class status), is a over populated city (with many low income residents, and residents of many ethnicity’s). It is also about 20 minutes from NYC. The city is known for its high crime and murder rate although it is reported that there had been no homicides in the city (prior to that event) for three months- a record low.- Many variables (including household income, diversity of races, and overpopulation) can account for the high crime rate of the city.

This article is different from many other news articles/stories reporting homocides (or crime in general). The article tells readers very little about the crime, but makes them aware of the occurrence. This could be because of police reporting to the media (or police restriction of details). Generally, the police tend to not report things to the media in which they unsure of, or makes them look bad to the public.

Police are seeking information about the circumstances surrounding the crime, and will most likely report to news sources their findings when have come up with conclusive evidence.

Parathyroid Phony costs $302 Million

aaroncatlin15 — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:13:24 +0000

This article was printed in the New York Times on April 16th, 2009 on page B9 of the New York edition. The article talks about how Quest Diagnostics was convicted of false advertising claims and sentenced to pay back $302 million in damages from the false advertising. In the article this money is divided up to repay many different governmental and state institutions such as Medicaid. These institutions and programs were swayed by this company and bought their product based on their advertisements. As these products showed to be ineffective an investigation was inspired and lead to the realization that these previous promises were false.

This article differs extremely from the common crime stories focused in the New York Times. Although this time of economic despair is surfacing more white collar crime, its still very disproportionate compared to violent street crime that receives much of the news spotlight. White collar crime is a crime that can be very hard to determine the costs and effects of the action. In this story no explaination is given of how the government decided that $302 million would be enough or what it would cover. This is the main reason why its hard to prosequete white collar crime. In the book on white collar crime that we read many crimes were given specific definitions. To me this crime seems to fit into the category of corporation on public. According to the article the company was stealing money from the public through the hands of the leading officials in the company.

A very interesting twist to this story is that there’s actually more than one company involved. Throughout Coleman’s book, The Criminal Elite, there was much haze on how to classify a dual company involved conspiracy. As the past has proved, with Enron, it can be very difficult to prove any individuals guilt in a large scale white collar crime incident. In this new situation I think that it will be even harder to decipher who did what and to punish them appropriately.

Another thing about this article that was very different from most news stories was the absence of individual names. The article only tells of how the company as a whole will be punished. Normally in large scale problems like this a CEO or a president is named to provide the public with some form of imagery. In this case however no names are mentioned which makes the crime seem less personal. To conclude I would like to as a question, this article seemed to be one that only provides momentary outrage which is shortly forgotten while a murder provides outrage that can last a whole persons life, why is this when the costs of this incident may have been more than one life?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/business/16tests.html?_r=1

Man Arrested in Pharmacy Robberies

Andrew — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:13:18 +0000

In Rochester, NH, Douglas Gray, 37, was arrested for his connection with recent robberies of oxycodone from pharmacies. He was charged with two counts of robbery in connection with incidents at the Rite Aid Pharmacy in Farmington on Dec. 29, 2008 and the Rite Aid Pharmacy in Rochester on Feb. 9. Over the past couple months a number of law enforcement agencies have worked together and were able to identify Gray’s residence and were about to arrest him without incident. According to officials, after he was arrested he was transported to Frisbie Hospital after complaining of an injury to his ankle that is believed to have occurred on April 3 when police said he fled from authorities in Maine. The incidents that occurred on April 3 took place when officers in Berwick, Maine were arresting Jocelyn Brown, Gray’s accomplice. Brown was arrested on warrants for conspiracy to commit robbery in the pharmacy robbery in Farmington and criminal liability for the Rochester robbery.

In class on March 25^th we discussed robberies and different characteristics about them and when looking at this situation there are a number of components that are addressed that we have previous addressed in class, the first being the severity of the robbery. According to what we have learned in class, most of the robberies committed are minor and usually amount to less than $1,000. In this case, although Gray is not stealing money, he most likely in either of his robberies was not able to get away with more than $1,000 worth of the drug. The next aspect of this report is the socio-economic status in which the robber is labeled. It is not made clear in the article whether this man is lower or upper class, but by looking at his mug shot and looking at the contents in which he stole, I think it is safe to assume to that this man is of lower socio-economic status and according to typology of robbers, people of lower socio-economic status are more likely to commit such a crime. Therefore he may have been stealing to drugs to then turn around and sell them to make a little extra money for himself and his accomplice. The last component that stands out in this article is the significance on the good in which he stole. When trying to assume what Gray’s motivations were for this robbery, by looking at what he stole, it might be safe to assume that he may have had an addiction to the drug and because of his low socio-economic status he could not buy them off the street so he need to find an alternative way of acquiring the drug. This is significant because in Conklin’s typology of robbers an addiction could be a motivation for robbing because the individual may need to rob to support their habit.

http://www.wmur.com/news/19122309/detail.html

Hopital worker kills two and then self

Andrew — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:13:05 +0000

In Long Beach, CA on Thursday April 16^th, Mario Ramirez, age 50, showed up to work at the Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and show Hugo Bustamante and Kelly Hales before then turning the gun on himself and pulling the trigger. According to witnesses the scene was very chaotic as gunshots rang out just before noon. Laura Harris, who saw the second shooting as she drove by the emergency entrance, said that Ramirez shot Hales in the leg, then stood over him and shot him again, then put the gun to his own head but appeared to be wavering, pacing and appeared frustrated. She described his behavior to be as if he couldn’t make up his mind about whether or not he was going to kill himself but then he finally put the gun to his and pulled the trigger. It is not clear why Ramirez, a technician at the outpatient pharmacy, killed Bustamante, the pharmacy manager and Hales, the executive director. There was some questioning of whether or not it had to do with a dispute or possible layoffs but according to officials, layoffs had taken place the month before and there were no other reductions planned. According to almost everyone that knew Ramirez they made it clear that this situation just didn’t seem fitting for him considering he was a father of two and also married. Ramirez was described as a family man who was quite and polite and was known around the hospital for being quick with a joke and a smile.

This article goes back to our class on 2/2/2009, when we talked about the news script. Just like many of the other article like this one, there is a structure to how this script is played out in the article. The first component of this article is the announcement of the crime and this is accomplished when the article starts out with the report that Ramirez had shot Hales and Bustamante. As a reader, we were then “transported” to the scene of the crime, where we were filled in on what exactly took place, what the scene of the crime was like during the actual shooting and also who was affected by these events. The final part of the script was the identity of the suspect and the individuals involved and that was accomplished through a detailed description of the killer and also a brief description of the victims.

http://news.aol.com/article/hospital-worker-kills-2-then-self/432057

Middle Schoolers Arrested After Spiking Teacher’s Coffee

Andrew — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:12:48 +0000

On April 14^th, 2009, two middle school boys were expelled and arrested for spiking their teacher’s coffee with a substance that sent her to the hospital. These two boys, ages 13 and 14, were arrested after their 39 year old teacher fell ill at Sequoyah Middle school in Auburn Washington. According to the school, the teacher had seen the two boys at her desk earlier that morning, before she had taken a sip of her coffee, did not think anything of it and continued on with her morning. She later got sick from drinking her coffee and had to be rushed to the hospital. Turns out that the solution they put in the coffee was ipecac, which is syrup that induces vomiting. The teacher was then treated at the hospital and was released and is reportedly doing much better. Unfortunately for the boys, on the way out of the school as she was being taken to the hospital, she was able to point out who the two boys were. These boys also had boasted about the prank to fellow classmates and after being apprehended by school security officers, they admitted to spiking the coffee. These boys were then expelled from the school and are currently booked as juveniles with charges on suspicion of introducing a noxious substance with the intent to commit bodily harm.

When talking about juveniles, especially boys, a lot of times we try to justify why they do the things that they do. In most cases that explanation is the “boys will be boys” idea which allows these kids to get away with more than they should. In our society it is expected that boys will be delinquent and will get themselves into trouble, which is something I feel she not be accepted and should be looked down upon. I feel that in too many cases, especially ones like this one, these young men find it to be ok to participate in these behaviors and know that they will probably get a slap on the wrist for their actions. Therefore I hope that a case like this will help establish a foundation for other people and other schools to place more focus on trying to cut down on actions like this. I’m sure that these boys were not intentionally trying to hospitalize this woman or kill her, their intentions were most likely to get a couple laughs out of the situation and to continue on with their day. Therefore, by the school and law enforcement punishing them the way that they did hopefully it will make others think twice about repeating these actions and deter them from participating in this kind of delinquency.

http://news.aol.com/article/teacher-coffee-spiked/427712