WHITE COLLAR CRIME

White-collar crime refers to financially motivated nonviolent crime committed by business and government professionals. Within criminology, it was first defined by sociologist Edwin Sutherland in 1939 as "a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation".

What Is White Collar Crime?

Sutherland’s ‘approximate’ definition and the debates surrounding it led to much conceptual and linguistic confusion – as Nelken (1997a: 896) comments, ‘if Sutherland merited a Nobel prize, as Mannheim thought, for pioneering this field of study, he certainly did not deserve it for the clarity or serviceableness of his definition’. The key words and phrases ‘crime’, committed by ‘persons of respectability and high social status’, ‘in the course of’ an ‘occupation’ all lead to problems in determining which activities are to be included. The contentious issue of crime will be dealt with below, and this section will focus on social status and occupation.

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