Clinard, Marshall (1911–)

MARSHALL BARRON CLINARD is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Clinard's early education was at Stanford University, and his doctoral training occurred at the famous Chicago School, officially known as the department of sociology at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in sociology in 1941. A highly distinguished scholar in the discipline of sociology and the subfield of criminology, Clinard has held academic positions in several universities, including the university of Iowa and Wisconsin, and Vanderbilt University.

In the course of his long and prominent career, Clinard has authored or co-written more than 10 books, 40 articles, and 25 book chapters. His awards are numerous, and he has been honored by many of the leading academic and professional organizations in sociology, criminology and white-collar crime. These include the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, the American Society of Criminology, the American Sociological Association, and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. Clinard is known for his research in areas that include the sociology of deviant behavior, corporate crime, as well as gang formation and control.

Clinard was one of the first criminologists to follow Edwin Sutherland's early white-collar crime research. In his 1952 study of black-market offenses during World War II, Clinard examined whether these forms of behavior should be considered white-collar crime. He challenged Sutherland's differential association theory by arguing that the personality characteristics of black-market offenders were equally likely to explain their behaviors. Following the 1952 study, Clinard made significant and longstanding contributions to the study of whitecollar and corporate crime through his research with critical theorist Richard Quinney.

Their efforts at resolving ongoing definitional disputes resulted in the widely accepted division of white-collar crime into two distinct forms: corporate crime, which occurs on behalf of a corporation and benefits the corporation, and occupational crime, which is committed by individuals against their employing organizations, and benefits the individual offender.

This typology clearly articulated the appropriate unit of analysis for white-collar crime research: either the corporation, or the individual. As a result, additional white-collar crime research focused on either corporate crime or occupational crime. This did not solve the definitional debates, but at least added conceptual clarity to the field.

A subsequent research contribution made by Clinard resulted from his collaboration with Peter Cleary Yeager on a study that was published in two forms: 1979's Illegal Corporate Behavior and 1980's Corporate Crime. In the Sutherland tradition, Clinard and Yeager examined crimes committed by the 477 largest manufacturing corporations and the 105 largest wholesale, retail, and service corporations in the United States in the years 1975 and 1976. In that two-year time frame, these 582 corporations were the target of 1,553 federal cases.

Clinard's research into the corporate suites of America revealed companies violate the law with great frequency.

The implications of the study were staggering: due to the fact that the numbers were based only on cases brought against the corporations, they underestimated the true, total amount of corporate crime. To use the authors' terms, the findings were merely “the tip of the iceberg.” The results confirmed Sutherland's principal finding: corporations violate the law with great frequency. Nearly a quarter of a century after these studies, the results provide a valuable context for researchers examining corporate crime.

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