Dr.
Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University
Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
2020-21
Subject-: White Collar Crime
Topic- Privileged Class Deviance
Submitted to Submitted by
Dr. Malay Pandey Shalini Dwivedi
Assistant Professor LLM 2nd Sem
Enroll No.- 200102020
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Forms of Privileged Class Deviance
There are three forms of Privileged Class Deviance-:
1. Professional Deviance
2. Police Deviance
3. Official Deviance
1. Professional deviance-: Professional deviance occurs when a profession's principles,
norms, ethics, rules, and regulations are ignored, resulting in violations of the code of
conduct, rules, and regulations. In basic words, professional deviance occurs when an
individual violates the rights of others while working in a respectable profession. Profession
encompasses a wide range of jobs, including legal, medical, teaching, education, and
engineering, among others. The primary reason for this divergent behaviour is the lack of
education, information and illiteracy of the poor, because the poor are unknown, trust the
experts and are easily deceived by them.
Legal profession-: The deviating conduct of lawyers and other members of the legal
profession leads to deviation. Legal profession is a renowned, respectable and proud career.
Lawyers' profession was regarded one of the finest occupations in India, however recently
this profession's reputation and renown has progressively declined. The primary cause for this
is the deviant conduct of few advocates, which led to numerous inequalities.
There are 3 main provisions or acts which deals with legal profession which are:
i. The Legal Practitioners Act, 1879.
ii. The Indian Bar Council Act, 1926.
iii. The Advocates Act, 1961.
These are acts dealing with a legal profession and all practising advocates must abide by the
rules and regulations mentioned under those acts, but it is only a piece of paper or a document
for some lawyers and they feel that it is not useful to follow, as a consequence of this the
advocates practise an illegal act and execute deviation.
Examples of deviant behaviour of legal profession are:
a. Fabrication of evidence
b. Getting into terms and agreements between the opposition parties
c. Asking all irrelevant and uncomfortable questions to the victims while cross-examination
and etc.
Doctor (medical profession)-: Doctors are regarded worldwide as life-saving doctors. They
are regarded like gods, since many individuals are born of death. And it is true that many
physicians have an abnormal conduct, and the primary cause for this abnormality of doctors
is that they are obsessed with money or even destroyed by acting in their shoes.
2 major provision or acts which deals with medical profession are:
i) Indian Medical Degree Act, 1916.
ii) Indian Medical Council Act, 1956.
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Examples of Medical profession deviance are:
a. False post-mortem reports
b. Illegal abortion
c. Overdose medicines for normal disease
d. Illicit trafficking of organs
e. Avoiding treatment for the patient who met with an accident and waiting for police orders.
And etc.
2. Police deviance-: Deviance when carried out by the police department or by a person who
is the police is a Police Deviance. Police agencies are powerful and play a key role in every
particular society, defend the law and respond if someone breaks any legislation. The police
department has the lead in protecting people from unlawful actions, but if they simply violate
the laws and regulations, the people may also do the same by default. Indian Police Act of
1861 has been established to reorganise and ensure that the police force operates effectively,
without any unlawful activity.
The police department have many duties such as:
a. Maintenance of law-and-order situation.
b. Patrolling and surveillance
c. Implement Preventing function
d. Investigation of crimes
e. Arrest criminals
If one of these responsibilities and few others are broken, such deviant police behaviour is
termed Police Deviance. Police deviance is a far broader concept than corruption. Police
deviance covers all kinds of actions that do not comply with standards, values and so forth.
There are many types of Police deviance such as:
1. Police brutality
2. Third Degree methods – famous case: Kishore J. Chawla vs Union of India- The police
being the protector of law should not fear the minds of the people.
3. Encounter killings
4. Fake encounters
5. Intoxication while in duty and etc
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3. Official deviance-: When these official, such as bureaucrats, judges and legislators are
done deviance then it is called as official deviance. These are the ones who are responsible
for the wellbeing of society since society is in a controlled condition.
a) Bureaucrats are the officials in charge of a nation's administrative duties. The primary task
of this department is to collect taxes and revenue.
The following are the deviance which the Bureaucrats do:
i) Red-Tapism
ii) Corruption
iii) Misappropriation of money
b) Judges are those who provide justice to victims and punish the wrongdoer, if the judge
gives the judgment to the parties (victims) in an incorrect and partial manner, then the people
living around them will lose their trust and belief in the (judicial) system.
Examples of deviance done by Judges are:
i) Taking bribe and giving a wrong judgement
ii) Taking political influence and joining the wrong ones
iii) Personal contract with the Advocates
iv) Personal interest in giving justice and thus removing the legal spirit of the system.
c) Legislators are the ones who are chosen by the people and there lays a responsibility or
obligation on them that they should serve the people who trusted them and voted in the
elections, they should serve the interests of the public and not against it.
Examples of deviance done by Legislators are-:
i) Having a close relationship with the criminals
ii) Corruption: A huge amount of sum is collected for the party’s benefit but nothing is done
in reality
iii) Favouritism is done by them whenever there is tender for petrol pump or diesel pump or
any other industry etc.
