Offenses Against the Public - Assignment Example

Introduction Lippman, (2010) defines bribery as the practice of receiving, offering, soliciting, and giving something of significance for purposes of influencing the act of an official in charge of his or her, legal public duties. It can also be said to be an illicit gain advantage. The Federal General Statute Bribery is responsible for punishing the bribery offenses in the United States. The law pertaining bribery punishes whomever indirectly or directly, offers, gives, or promises anything of worth to an officer in charge of public duties with an aim of influencing the official deed will be committing a bribery offence.

In this regard, this paper aims at describing bribery as well as expounding on the laws that pertain to it. Question 1: Description of public trust crime (Bribery) Bribery can be described by a wide variety of conducts and in most cases; it is a crime that has a structure and white-collar situations. Some of the obvious bribery examples are release of an arrestee, acquiring a contract of the government award and vote from a legislator on one’s bill. Scheb (2012) explains the traditional perception of the public servants by knowing the bribery potential in political parties’ ranks.

Money is what comes to mind of many when bribes are requested or offered. There are many forms of bribes that are offered or sought. Therefore, bribe does not only include cash or its equals, but also intangible or tangible benefits as sexual favors, vehicles, homes vacation and other price benefits. Consequently, bribes can occur in a number of disguised or subtle ways like; selling of property for a smaller price than its worth value, where the main aim of the seller is to benefit the person who is purchasing property in order to influence his government official actions.

Bribery is in white-collar crimes category because it is nonviolent and focuses on the social background of the person involved in the act. Lippman (2010) argues that White-collar crime is an illegal act which employs concealment and deceit rather than force application in order to obtain service, property or money. This is what bribery aims at; it does not involve any form of violence but rather takes an advantage to avoid loss or payment of cash in order to obtain a professional or business advantage.

The bribery offenders occupy professions, responsibility positions, civil organizations, and government trusts. Bribery can also be described according to the form of its activity. For example, it has an advantage of seeking the attention to consumer and tax fraud as well as other offenses. Individuals who commit this crime are from various backgrounds socioeconomically. Another form of bribery as Scheb (2012) clarifies is commercial bribe which involves, offering or giving indirectly or directly, something of worth to an employee, private agent or fiduciary without the employer’s knowledge, in order to influence the employee’s or agent’s actions in relation to the affairs of the employer.

Travel bribery is another form of bribery crime whereby; an individual decides to interstate or use facility with an aim of promoting, facilitating or establishing a promotion of any activities unlawfully is guilt of bribery crime. Conducting activities, which are unlawful, is therefore, bribery in the United States. Therefore, bribery as a crime includes many