Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - General, grade: 1,7, University of Siegen, language: English, abstract: Punishment '...is the authorized imposition of deprivations - of freedom or privacy or other goods to which the person otherwise has a right, or the imposition of special burdens - because the person has been found guilty of some criminal violation, typically (though not invariably) involving harm to the innocent'. In order to explain what kind of punishment should be imposed on white-collar criminals we need to figure out the intentions of punishment and why punishment is necessary in the first place.