Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme is one of the most famous white-collar crimes. The term “Ponzi” was established in the dictionary of the United States nearly ten years ago when Madoff was detained and accused of securities scams. The former rescuer, sprayer specialist, and the chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation accomplished to construct a multi-billion dollar speculation organization with fabricated interchange reports and deprived of the support from the chief byproducts companies, each of which declined to conduct business with it. Despite the fact that he had been assumed to run financial schemes ten years before the incident, in 2008, one of his children decided to report on Bernie Madoff and get his father arrested. Nonetheless, a year after the criminal admitted to committing eleven national wrongdoings, including “securities fraud, money laundering, and theft from an employee benefit plan. The penalty: 150 years in prison and $170 billion in restitution — investors lost billions of dollars due to the scandal” (“Con of the Century” par. 6).
Merton’s Strain Theory is a contemporary instance of conservational sides of why individuals commit wrongdoings. The foremost concept of Strain Theory is that the mass media and the social order insidiously say to the citizens that they require increasing their quantifiable prosperity in order to attain a particular kind of reputable position, and if they are underprivileged or in an unlucky socio-financial situation, with an abundant amount of efforts, they also are able to attain the so-called ‘American Dream.’ Unluckily, Strain Theory clarifies that not everybody is fortunate to achieve the American Dream, even in cases when they put a lot of effort into it. Because of not attaining this desired goal and having obstructed prospects, the populaces will always search for substitutes in order to attempt to attain the American Dream, as it has been entrenched in the minds of the population insidiously from their very first days of living (Santoro 341).
The social order speaks with everybody claiming that they are an achievement grounded upon how much quantifiable prosperity they have attained. The image of the American Dream and the Strain Theory works in reverse as well: if a person fails to possess lots of quantifiable treasure, then the social order will consider him as a disappointment (“Social Control Theory” par. 4). The social order will assess a deprived individual’s insufficiency as a symbol of indolence as a replacement for difficulty with the social order and impassable prospects that these typically metropolitan, low socio-financial entities are facing. “This, in turn, would make these unfortunate individuals develop a sort of strain; this strain, in turn, would make the individuals adopt into criminals, or conformists” (Keel par. 3).
For Social Control Theory, the fundamental interpretation of hominoid nature comprises the commencement of unrestricted determination, thus providing the criminals with the capability of selection and the accountability for their performance (Black 37). In isolation, Social Control Theory is associated to a greater extent with the conventional studies of criminology than with other perceptions. On the whole, social control theory suggests a collective assessment or confidence in societal customs and standards (Carver 24). Even the people who commit crimes or disrupt societal customs are expected to share the overall confidence that those norms and regulations should be obeyed. Corruption and nonconformity are deliberated as the foreseeable performances that the social order has not condensed. Clarifying the conformism, for the most part, the procedure by which the persons are socialized to follow the regulations is the core of social control theory. In the case of the Ponzi scheme crime, the strain theory is more applicable, as gaining material wealth was the main goal of the criminal who stood behind the scheme.
Works Cited
Black, Donald. Toward a General Theory of Social Control: Fundamentals, New York, New York: Academic Press, 2014. Print.
Carver, Charles. Attention and Self-Regulation: A Control-Theory Approach to Human Behavior, Berlin, Germany: Springer Science & Business Media, 2012. Print.
Con of the Century 2013. Web.
Keel, Robert 2008.Structural Strain Theories. Web.
Santoro, Wayne. “Gendered Rioting: A General Strain Theoretical Approach.” Social Forces 93.1 (2014): 329-354. Print.
Social Control Theory2012. Web.