Henry N Pontell
Biographic Data
| ID | 220418 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Henry N Pontell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Henry N |
| FAMILY NAME | Pontell |
| SIGNATURE | PONTELL H N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2487-4581 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 137 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Social Strain or Self-Control: An Empirical Test of Explanations of Employee Theft
Crime and crisis in China’s P2P online lending market: A comparative analysis of fraud
White-collar criminality continues to be a significant issue in countries with differing levels of economic development. This paper provides a comparative analysis of white-collar crime and crises through an examination of the recent peer-to-peer (P2P) online lending crash in China. It considers criminological findings from major United States crises in light of China’s P2P online lending market failure through the lens of white-collar crime theo…
Occupational crimes in casinos: Employee theft in Macau, China
Political crime and corruption take center stage: Introductory notes
In-your-face Watergate: Neutralizing government lawbreaking and the war against white-collar crime
Deviance, Reactivist Definitions of
The sociology of deviance entails two major perspectives, both of which emphasize the relative nature of the phenomenon. The normative perspective views deviance as being located in customs and rules; deviance is the formal violation of one or more norms. The reactivist perspective takes a more radical approach to the relative nature of deviance, and views the existence and characteristics of deviance in how real behaviors, beliefs, or conditions…
Theoretical, Empirical, and Policy Implications of Alternative Definitions of “White-Collar Crime”
Commentary
How to effectively get crooks like Bernie Madoff in Dutch 1
Identity theft: Bounded rationality, research, and policy
New Times, New Crimes: “Blocking” Financial Identity Fraud
International Handbook of White-Collar and Corporate Crime
Deviance, Reactivist Definitions of
The sociology of deviance entails two major perspectives, both of which emphasize the relative nature of the phenomenon. The normative perspective, which most sociologists adhere to, views deviance as being located in customs and rules; deviance is the formal violation of one or more norms. The reactivist perspective, which has been associated with the labeling theory of deviance, takes a more radical approach to the relative nature of deviance, …
Choosing White-Collar Crime
Unmasking the Crimes of the Powerful: Scrutinizing States and Corporations
Profit Without Honor: White Collar Crime and the Looting of America
1. Introduction. 2. Crimes Against Consumers. 3. Unsafe Products. 4. Environmental Crime. 5. Institutional Corruption: Mass Media and Religion. 6. Securities Fraud. 7. Fiduciary Fraud: Crime in the Banking, Insurance, and Pension Fund Industries. 8. Crimes by the Government. 9. Corruption of Public Officials. 10. Medical Crime. 11. Computer Crime. 12. Conclusions
Big Money Crime: Fraud and Politics in the Savings and Loan Crisis
At a cost of $500 billion to American taxpayers, the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s was the worst financial crisis of the twentieth century as well as a crime unparalleled in American history. Yet the vast majority of its perpetrators will never be prosecuted, and those who were have received minimal sentences. In the first in-depth scrutiny of the ways and means of this disaster, this groundbreaking book comes to disturbing conclusions ab…
The Savings and Loan Debacle, Financial Crime, and the State
The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s was one of the worst financial disasters of the twentieth century. We argue here that much financial fraud of the sort that contributed to this debacle constitutes 'collective embezzlement,' and that this collective embezzlement may be the prototypical corporate crime of the late twentieth century. We further argue that the state may have a different relationship to this kind of financial fraud than to man…
Social Deviance: Readings in Theory and Research
(NOTE: * Readings new to this edition are bolded.) I. INTRODUCTION. Moral Entrepreneurs: The Creation and Enforcement of Deviant Categories, Howard S. Becker. Ironies of Social Control: Authorities as Contributors to Deviance Through Escalation, Nonenforcement, and Covert Facilitation, Gary T. Marx. The Discovery of Child Abuse, Stephen J. Pfohl. II. THEORIES. Functionalism, Anomie, and Strain. The Normal and the Pathological, Emile Durkheim. Soc…
The Savings and Loan Debacle of the 1980s: White‐Collar Crime or Risky Business
This paper examines the role of white‐collar crime in the savings and loan crisis. Noting economists' assertions that crime was only a minor ingredient in the crisis, we compare the explanatory power of this “minimal fraud” model to that of its “material fraud” alternative. Bringing together evidence from every major study of thrifts in the 1980s, we argue that only the material fraud hypothesis can make sense of these data. This study demonstrat…
Prescription for Profit: How Doctors Defraud Medicaid
The State and White-Collar Crime: Saving the Savings and Loans
We attempt to make sense of the law enforcement response to the savings and loan debacle and the larger pattern of white-collar crime enforcement of which it is a part. Drawing from government documents and in-depth interviews with federal regulators and enforcement officials, we argue that the current response to savings and loan fraud is unprecedented both in terms of the extensive resources committed and the prosecution of thousands of white-c…
The Savings and Loan Industry
Crime and fraud were central factors in the savings and loan crisis. Insider abuse was in large part a product of the organizational environment within which thrifts operated in the 1980s. Thrift deregulation in the early 1980s, in conjunction with federal insurance on thrift deposits, produced a "criminogenic environment" in which opportunities for fraud were extensive and risks were minimal. Various common patterns of fraud-"illegal risk taking…
Money, Medicine, and Malpractice in American Society
Preface Introduction Calamity in Context The Basis For Need (1945-1966) An Emerging Clash of Costs and Care (1966-1975) From Choice to Necessity Crisis, Claims, and New Connections: The First Malpractice Crisis Costs, Calamities, and the Second Malpractice Crisis (1975-Present) Reinsurance and Shifts in Influence The Corporatization of Physicians Courting Plaintiffs: Private Reform of Tort Law Rights Terminus Glossary References Index
White-Collar Crime in the Savings and Loan Scandal
This article elaborates on the nature and scale of white-collar crime in the savings and loan crisis. It provides an overview of the thrift industry and the impact of deregulation on opportunities for fraud. Violations are then discussed under the general headings of “unlawful risk taking,”“collective embezzlement,” and “covering up,” and similarities are noted between criminal activities of thrift operators and those of persons associated with t…
Deterrence Theory Versus Practice
Recently, some researchers have attempted to resurrect deterrence theory. These researchers have focused on the relationship between certainty and severity of punishment and subsequent rates of crime. An inverse relationship has been found, leading these researchers to conclude that penal sanctions deter crime. This paper presents another hypothesis, namely, that increases in crime may overburden existing legal machinery, and thus cause decreases…
The Savings and Loan Debacle, Financial Crime, and the State
The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s was one of the worst financial disasters of the twentieth century. We argue here that much financial fraud of the sort that contributed to this debacle constitutes 'collective embezzlement,' and that this collective embezzlement may be the prototypical corporate crime of the late twentieth century. We further argue that the state may have a different relationship to this kind of financial fraud than to man…
Savings and Loan Fraud as Organized Crime: Toward a Conceptual Typology of Corporate Illegality
This paper proposes a classification scheme for distinguishing “organized crime” and “corporate crime” based not on the occupational position or social status of their perpetrators, but on the motives and methods of the offenses themselves. Using government documents, interviews with FBI investigators and thrift regulators, as well as a variety of secondary sources, it documents patterns of crime in the savings and loan industry and demonstrates …
Other's People's Money' Revisited: Collective Embezzlement in the Savings and Loan and Insurance Industries
This paper compares what is called here “collective embezzlement” in the savings and loan and insurance industries, tracing this embezzlement by top management in these two industries to structures of opportunity and risk that are specific to their location in finance capitalism. Using data from government reports, congressional hearings, and media accounts of particular cases, we argue that the deregulation of the 1980s combined with protective …
Policing Physicians: Practitioner Fraud and Abuse in a Government Medical Program
Fraud and abuse by physicians participating in government medical programs incurs physical and fiscal costs to society. This paper focuses on the enforcement process by which such behavior is detected, defined, and sanctioned. Interviews with officials in California's Medi-Cal program reveal the special problems associated with the influence of physicians' professional power on the enforcement process. In addition, the occupational status of phys…
Unmasking the Crimes of the Powerful: Scrutinizing States and Corporations
The State and White-Collar Crime: Saving the Savings and Loans
We attempt to make sense of the law enforcement response to the savings and loan debacle and the larger pattern of white-collar crime enforcement of which it is a part. Drawing from government documents and in-depth interviews with federal regulators and enforcement officials, we argue that the current response to savings and loan fraud is unprecedented both in terms of the extensive resources committed and the prosecution of thousands of white-c…
Seriousness of crimes: A survey of the nation's chiefs of police
Choosing White-Collar Crime
Is Justice “Collar‐blind”: Punishing Medicaid Provider Fraud
The question of punishment of white‐collar criminals is addressed in this paper through an examination of sanctions imposed on health care providers convicted of defrauding California's Medicaid “Medi‐Cal” system. Quantitative data were collected from Medi‐Cal case files and, for comparative purposes, from a statewide data base maintained by the California Bureau of Criminal Statistics for grand theft arrestees. Qualitative data comprising interv…
Identity theft: Bounded rationality, research, and policy
The Savings and Loan Debacle of the 1980s: White‐Collar Crime or Risky Business
This paper examines the role of white‐collar crime in the savings and loan crisis. Noting economists' assertions that crime was only a minor ingredient in the crisis, we compare the explanatory power of this “minimal fraud” model to that of its “material fraud” alternative. Bringing together evidence from every major study of thrifts in the 1980s, we argue that only the material fraud hypothesis can make sense of these data. This study demonstrat…
White-Collar Crime in the Savings and Loan Scandal
This article elaborates on the nature and scale of white-collar crime in the savings and loan crisis. It provides an overview of the thrift industry and the impact of deregulation on opportunities for fraud. Violations are then discussed under the general headings of “unlawful risk taking,”“collective embezzlement,” and “covering up,” and similarities are noted between criminal activities of thrift operators and those of persons associated with t…
Practitioner Fraud and Abuse in Medical Benefit Programs: Government Regulation and Professional White‐Collar Crime
Physicians who defraud and abuse medical benefit programs provide a unique group of lawbreakers for scientific study. They could be considered to epitomize white collar criminals given their exceedingly high socioeconomic status and power as a professional group. Using official reports and documents, as well as interviews with enforcement and program personnel at both state and federal levels, this study examines the problem of physician fraud an…
Counties in Court: Interorganizational Adaptations to Jail Litigation in California
Criminal justice systems have been described as fragmented and decentralized "nonsystems," but sudden changes in the environments of criminal justice organizations may affect the loose coupling that normally characterizes such agencies. Court orders against county jails create pressures to tighten the loose coupling among local organizational subsystems: the jail, law enforcement, courts, probation, and county government. Using interviews with ke…
Court Caseloads, Plea Bargains, and Criminal Sanctions: The Effects of Section 17 P.C. In California
In an effort to relieve its overburdened superior courts, California introduced a statutory amendment which allowed lesser felonies to be dealt with in lower‐level courts. Using an interrupted time‐series methodology, this study examines the impact of this change in law on caseloads, plea bargaining, conviction rates, and sentencing in the superior courts. After the statutory intervention there was a reduction in superior court caseloads, but the…
Culture Conflict Revisited: Fraud by Vietnamese Physicians in the United States
Assaults in the air: Concerning attacks against flight attendants
Violence directed at airline personnel by passengers while an aircraft is in flight presents an interesting and uncommon form of deviant behavior that can inform the study of deviance in general. Such behavior has been identified by various observers as a growing social problem. This paper explores the phenomenon of assaults against flight attendants through analysis of official data including both case files and statistics, interviews with offic…
How to effectively get crooks like Bernie Madoff in Dutch 1
The Savings and Loan Industry
Crime and fraud were central factors in the savings and loan crisis. Insider abuse was in large part a product of the organizational environment within which thrifts operated in the 1980s. Thrift deregulation in the early 1980s, in conjunction with federal insurance on thrift deposits, produced a "criminogenic environment" in which opportunities for fraud were extensive and risks were minimal. Various common patterns of fraud-"illegal risk taking…
Medical Fraud and Abuse: Australia, Canada, and the United States
Criminologists have paid scant attention to the issue of crime and abuse in the field of the delivery of health care by physicians. However, largely because of the escalating costs of such services in recent years, government officials and academics have begun to examine this form of white-collar crime. The present paper explores the.extent of violations by physicians in the course of their involvement in health benefit programs in Australia, Can…
Deterrence Theory Versus Practice
Recently, some researchers have attempted to resurrect deterrence theory. These researchers have focused on the relationship between certainty and severity of punishment and subsequent rates of crime. An inverse relationship has been found, leading these researchers to conclude that penal sanctions deter crime. This paper presents another hypothesis, namely, that increases in crime may overburden existing legal machinery, and thus cause decreases…
Criminal Justice Research: Approaches, Problems, and Policy
Policing Physicians: Practitioner Fraud and Abuse in a Government Medical Program
Fraud and abuse by physicians participating in government medical programs incurs physical and fiscal costs to society. This paper focuses on the enforcement process by which such behavior is detected, defined, and sanctioned. Interviews with officials in California's Medi-Cal program reveal the special problems associated with the influence of physicians' professional power on the enforcement process. In addition, the occupational status of phys…
Assaults in the air: Concerning attacks against flight attendants
Violence directed at airline personnel by passengers while an aircraft is in flight presents an interesting and uncommon form of deviant behavior that can inform the study of deviance in general. Such behavior has been identified by various observers as a growing social problem. This paper explores the phenomenon of assaults against flight attendants through analysis of official data including both case files and statistics, interviews with offic…
Practitioner Fraud and Abuse in Medical Benefit Programs: Government Regulation and Professional White‐Collar Crime
Physicians who defraud and abuse medical benefit programs provide a unique group of lawbreakers for scientific study. They could be considered to epitomize white collar criminals given their exceedingly high socioeconomic status and power as a professional group. Using official reports and documents, as well as interviews with enforcement and program personnel at both state and federal levels, this study examines the problem of physician fraud an…
Medical Fraud and Abuse: Australia, Canada, and the United States
Criminologists have paid scant attention to the issue of crime and abuse in the field of the delivery of health care by physicians. However, largely because of the escalating costs of such services in recent years, government officials and academics have begun to examine this form of white-collar crime. The present paper explores the.extent of violations by physicians in the course of their involvement in health benefit programs in Australia, Can…
A Capacity to Punish: The Ecology of Crime and Punishment
Seriousness of crimes: A survey of the nation's chiefs of police
Court Caseloads, Plea Bargains, and Criminal Sanctions: The Effects of Section 17 P.C. In California
In an effort to relieve its overburdened superior courts, California introduced a statutory amendment which allowed lesser felonies to be dealt with in lower‐level courts. Using an interrupted time‐series methodology, this study examines the impact of this change in law on caseloads, plea bargaining, conviction rates, and sentencing in the superior courts. After the statutory intervention there was a reduction in superior court caseloads, but the…
A Demographic Portrait of Physicians Sanctioned by the Federal Government for Fraud and Abuse Against Medicare and Medicaid
Pontell, Henry N. PhD; Jesilow, Paul PhD; Geis, Gilbert PhD; O'Brien, Mary Jane MA Author Information
Texas Prisons: The Walls Came Tumbling Down
Counties in Court: Interorganizational Adaptations to Jail Litigation in California
Criminal justice systems have been described as fragmented and decentralized "nonsystems," but sudden changes in the environments of criminal justice organizations may affect the loose coupling that normally characterizes such agencies. Court orders against county jails create pressures to tighten the loose coupling among local organizational subsystems: the jail, law enforcement, courts, probation, and county government. Using interviews with ke…
Other's People's Money' Revisited: Collective Embezzlement in the Savings and Loan and Insurance Industries
This paper compares what is called here “collective embezzlement” in the savings and loan and insurance industries, tracing this embezzlement by top management in these two industries to structures of opportunity and risk that are specific to their location in finance capitalism. Using data from government reports, congressional hearings, and media accounts of particular cases, we argue that the deregulation of the 1980s combined with protective …
Culture Conflict Revisited: Fraud by Vietnamese Physicians in the United States
Is Justice “Collar‐blind”: Punishing Medicaid Provider Fraud
The question of punishment of white‐collar criminals is addressed in this paper through an examination of sanctions imposed on health care providers convicted of defrauding California's Medicaid “Medi‐Cal” system. Quantitative data were collected from Medi‐Cal case files and, for comparative purposes, from a statewide data base maintained by the California Bureau of Criminal Statistics for grand theft arrestees. Qualitative data comprising interv…
The Savings and Loan Industry
Crime and fraud were central factors in the savings and loan crisis. Insider abuse was in large part a product of the organizational environment within which thrifts operated in the 1980s. Thrift deregulation in the early 1980s, in conjunction with federal insurance on thrift deposits, produced a "criminogenic environment" in which opportunities for fraud were extensive and risks were minimal. Various common patterns of fraud-"illegal risk taking…
Money, Medicine, and Malpractice in American Society
Preface Introduction Calamity in Context The Basis For Need (1945-1966) An Emerging Clash of Costs and Care (1966-1975) From Choice to Necessity Crisis, Claims, and New Connections: The First Malpractice Crisis Costs, Calamities, and the Second Malpractice Crisis (1975-Present) Reinsurance and Shifts in Influence The Corporatization of Physicians Courting Plaintiffs: Private Reform of Tort Law Rights Terminus Glossary References Index
White-Collar Crime in the Savings and Loan Scandal
This article elaborates on the nature and scale of white-collar crime in the savings and loan crisis. It provides an overview of the thrift industry and the impact of deregulation on opportunities for fraud. Violations are then discussed under the general headings of “unlawful risk taking,”“collective embezzlement,” and “covering up,” and similarities are noted between criminal activities of thrift operators and those of persons associated with t…
Savings and Loan Fraud as Organized Crime: Toward a Conceptual Typology of Corporate Illegality
This paper proposes a classification scheme for distinguishing “organized crime” and “corporate crime” based not on the occupational position or social status of their perpetrators, but on the motives and methods of the offenses themselves. Using government documents, interviews with FBI investigators and thrift regulators, as well as a variety of secondary sources, it documents patterns of crime in the savings and loan industry and demonstrates …
Prescription for Profit: How Doctors Defraud Medicaid
The State and White-Collar Crime: Saving the Savings and Loans
We attempt to make sense of the law enforcement response to the savings and loan debacle and the larger pattern of white-collar crime enforcement of which it is a part. Drawing from government documents and in-depth interviews with federal regulators and enforcement officials, we argue that the current response to savings and loan fraud is unprecedented both in terms of the extensive resources committed and the prosecution of thousands of white-c…
Social Deviance: Readings in Theory and Research
(NOTE: * Readings new to this edition are bolded.) I. INTRODUCTION. Moral Entrepreneurs: The Creation and Enforcement of Deviant Categories, Howard S. Becker. Ironies of Social Control: Authorities as Contributors to Deviance Through Escalation, Nonenforcement, and Covert Facilitation, Gary T. Marx. The Discovery of Child Abuse, Stephen J. Pfohl. II. THEORIES. Functionalism, Anomie, and Strain. The Normal and the Pathological, Emile Durkheim. Soc…
The Savings and Loan Debacle of the 1980s: White‐Collar Crime or Risky Business
This paper examines the role of white‐collar crime in the savings and loan crisis. Noting economists' assertions that crime was only a minor ingredient in the crisis, we compare the explanatory power of this “minimal fraud” model to that of its “material fraud” alternative. Bringing together evidence from every major study of thrifts in the 1980s, we argue that only the material fraud hypothesis can make sense of these data. This study demonstrat…
Profit Without Honor: White Collar Crime and the Looting of America
1. Introduction. 2. Crimes Against Consumers. 3. Unsafe Products. 4. Environmental Crime. 5. Institutional Corruption: Mass Media and Religion. 6. Securities Fraud. 7. Fiduciary Fraud: Crime in the Banking, Insurance, and Pension Fund Industries. 8. Crimes by the Government. 9. Corruption of Public Officials. 10. Medical Crime. 11. Computer Crime. 12. Conclusions
Big Money Crime: Fraud and Politics in the Savings and Loan Crisis
At a cost of $500 billion to American taxpayers, the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s was the worst financial crisis of the twentieth century as well as a crime unparalleled in American history. Yet the vast majority of its perpetrators will never be prosecuted, and those who were have received minimal sentences. In the first in-depth scrutiny of the ways and means of this disaster, this groundbreaking book comes to disturbing conclusions ab…
Criminology (32 works) · Political science (29 works) · Business (24 works) · Law (23 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (18 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Finance (12 works)