White-Collar Crime

The term white-collar crime was first introduced by Edwin Sutherland, in 1939, during his presidential address at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Society. He defined such a crime as one committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his or her occupation. Within this definition, Sutherland also included crimes committed by corporations, organizations, and other legal entities. In contrast to sociologists and criminologists of the time, who focused their attention almost exclusively on the importance of poverty, broken families, and disturbed personalities as crime factors, he claimed that white-collar criminals did not fit the profiles of street offenders. Sutherland emphasized the social background of offenders and focused on nonviolent offenses committed in the course of employment.

In his book White Collar Crime, Sutherland pointed out that white-collar crimes were those illegal acts committed by people in higher-status occupations. John Braithwaite argues that the book became popular because it addressed crimes committed by America's 70 largest private companies and 15 public utility corporations. However, because of fear of libel suits, all the references to those companies were removed. He suggested that his aim with the book was to reform the theory of criminal behavior rather than reform criminal behavior itself. Since that time, research on white-collar crime has become more popular and has had a significant impact on public policy and public opinions.

Sutherland expressed concern over those criminologists and sociologists who focused exclusively on crime committed by persons of low socioeconomic status and on street crimes. According to him, white-collar criminals could be people with different socioeconomic backgrounds. Particularly, crime can be committed by persons working and operating in large and powerful organizations. Consequently, Sutherland recommended that criminologists and sociologists pay greater attention to crimes committed by people from the middle or upper socioeconomic groups in connection with their occupations. At the same time, however, he also noted that such cases should be charged and handled differently from cases involving criminal acts by those of low socioeconomic status.

Sutherland observed that white-collar crime can cause social harm. The financial cost of white-collar crime is greater in the aggregate than the combined economic impact of common crimes. The cost of white-collar crime ranges to $600 billion annually, while street crime ranges to $20 billion annually. Sutherland underlined three main objectives:

(1) white-collar crime includes law-violative behavior,

(2) poor people are not the only ones who commit crime, and (3) his theory of differential association could explain a general process characteristic of all criminality.

Among critics of Sutherland's work, Paul Tappan noted in 1947 that white-collar crimes are not “crimes” if they are not included in legal definitions. He argued that actions that were not literally against the law were not crimes, and that persons who had not been convicted of criminal charges were not criminals. Ernest Burgess also supported Tappan with the view that Sutherland failed to distinguish between civil and criminal law. Consequently, scholars divided into two groups. Tappan and his followers have proposed new concepts instead of crime, including white-collar illegality, white-collar law breaking, and elite deviance.

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