Sutherland, Edwin H. (1893–1950)

CRIMINOLOGIST, TEACHER, and the person officially credited with the discovery of the white-collar criminal, on December 27, 1939, Edwin H. Sutherland coined the phrase in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,[Page 775] in a speech he delivered as president of the American Sociological Society. The most often cited of Sutherland's various definitions of white-collar crime, from his 1949 monograph of the same name, conceptualizes it “approximately as a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.”

Born in Gibbon, Nebraska, Sutherland was the fourth of five children of fundamentalist Baptist minister George Sutherland and Lizzie (Pickett) Sutherland. The family moved to Grand Island, Nebraska, in 1893, where Sutherland attended Grand Island College, played football, and graduated with an A.B. in 1904. ...