How does society react to professional criminals?

Society react to professional criminals

How do the policemen, the lawyers, and others react to them? Public officials allow them to escape arrest and prosecution because of their favoured position in crime.

The law enforcement officers sometimes work for them because they get money for the services rendered. Some politicians use them for their vested political interests. A professional criminal is also able to escape arrest by regular payments to certain officials, by seeking help of influential people to ‘fix’ case for him and by maintaining contacts with the power elite.

According to Sutherland (op. cit.: 128), professional criminals maintain that “there is no one who cannot be influenced if you go at it right and have sufficient backing, financially and politically. It may be difficult with some victims, some officials in some places but it can practically always be done. It is just a question of using head in the right way.”

Public toleration of professional crime results from public apathy towards law-violation which does not affect each person directly and concretely.

David Maurer (1964: 129) has suggested that public toleration of professional crime results from a combination of factors, including the involvement of the public as victims in illegal arrangements, public indifference towards crimes, aliveness about crime, and relationship between criminals and officials of law-enforcement agencies.