Financial Disparities And Criminal Justice Essay

1524 Words7 Pages

Financial disparities wield a significant influence on the outcome of justice. Although the ethics of banking should prevent banks from taking advantage of the public, especially if the bank is protected by federal insurance, financial misconduct is rampant within the industry, which erodes the public's trust not only in banking, but in the executive branch, which is supposed to prevent misdeeds. This can be particularly evident in white-collar crime because it falls on a wide spectrum of various financial crimes, often corporate fraud, embezzlement, public corruption, and money laundering, committed by individuals in positions of high trust and authority. . The process of prosecuting these crimes has shown concerning trends over the past few …show more content…

more than $426 billion in losses due to leniency in court, bribery of prosecution, and many of these cases going unreported (Flynn, 2023). It has become apparent that this is due to different financial scrutiny by those who hold authority over whether or not many corporations can escape criminal charges and receive leniency for the crime due to being more financially affluent (St-Georges, 2023). These terms of justice are further expressed by the Inaugural address by Franklin D. Roosevelt in which “the measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.” As stated, the U.S. government must be held accountable for this underlying corruption because the value of individuals should not be based on their wealth, and this should not affect whether justice is served (Janko, 2013). Given this information, the central inquiry to this research emerges: What is the impact of financial disparities on the prosecution of white-collar crime within corporations, and how do these disparities influence the outcomes of legal proceedings? Through thorough consideration, it becomes evident that there is a differential treatment of white-collar crimes, favoring corporations, which plays an extensive role in court case outcomes due to substantial wealth …show more content…

Specifically when businesses as well as officials with financial leeway intentionally have the authority to challenge and undermine the law. Essentially, this means that the process of corporations and officials being able to avoid the law undermines the more prevalent issue of the systematic corruption occurring by these entities exploiting their financial means away from the leeway of the law. With that being said, addressing this innate issue requires a multi-faceted initiative to hold these contenders accountable and close any pre-fixated loopholes occurring in the financial system. By doing so, we can continue to uphold the integrity of a non-financial discriminatory legal system, while also taking note of the substantial leniency on white-collar crime. Subsequently, the lenient consequences of white-collar crimes further perpetuate the inherent court corruption, and nonetheless, also continue this cycle of injustice. One significant element of this is the prevalent issue of DPA’s occurring in these