THE DIALECTICS OF WHITE-COLLAR CRIME - THE ANATOMY OF THE SAVINGS-AND-LOAN CRISIS AND THE CASE OF SILVERADO-BANKING-SAVINGS-AND-LOAN-ASSOCIATION

TWO perspectives prevail in analyses of the savings and loan industry' s crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s: on one hand are claims of indiv idual fraud and greed; on the other are arguments Focusing on organiza tional factors, particularly the deregulated environment in which lax or nonexistant oversight encouraged ''collective embezzelment.'' Both approaches rely on a narrow conceptualization of the concept of white- collar crime that focuses on identification of the static dimensions t hat differentiate white-collar crime from other crimes. We apply Schle gel and Weisburd's (1993) notion of white-collar crime as more of an i nteractive process than a set of unique defining factors by combining a theoretical focus on the state's policy-making process with an analy sis of organizational and occupational crime to analyze the role the s tate may play in creating the structural environment facilitating thos e behaviors. We analyze the case of Silverado Banking, Savings and Loa n Association to examine the behavioral effects of implementing a stat e policy of deregulation. The case suggests that state policy may not only regulate and restrict behavior, but actually contain defeating in centives that create corporate behaviors contradicting the policy's in tention. This points to the limitation of state theory in its focus on de jure policy creation as opposed to de facto policy implementation and its behavioral and structural consequences. Finally, we suggest th at organizational crimes may result not only from circumventing or vio lating laws that must be enforced; they may also derive from contradic tions contained in the policies of state projects themselves. As such, organizational crimes and deviant behavior may be better understood a s unintended consequences of die dialectics of state projects.