The Sentencing of White-Collar Criminals When judges confront convicted white-collar criminals, their sentencing world becomes particularly complicated. The cases are enormously heterogeneous. It is harder to speak of a typical bribery or securities fraud than a typical drug deal or mail theft. There are no acts of violence and usually no prior convictions on which to base a sentence. And in white-collar cases, far more often than in common crimes, matters of intent and motivation are often ambiguous.
