White-Collar Crime

Abstract

Abstract Nearly six decades have passed since Edwin Sutherland (1940) introduced the concept of white-collar crime. In his 1939 presidential address to the American Sociological Society, Sutherland outlined the case for its importance, criticized academic social scientists for the class bias in their near-exclusive focus on crimes of the disadvantaged, and called for more attention to respectable crime. He was not the first to point a finger at upperworld crime, but his efforts gave initial direction to investigations of it and its perpetrators. He also bequeathed a muckraking animus that is shared by many who find their way to studies of white-collar crime. Despite Sutherland’s efforts to move it into the criminological mainstream and the efforts of his successors, theoretical and empirical investigations of white-collar crime remain marginal to and largely unaffected by paradigmatic debates and core developments in criminology. They are the principal focus of research for proportionately few academics. One possible reason is the fact that few areas of criminological investigation are plagued with the intractable controversies that envelop this one. The conceptual ambiguities, distinctions, and taxonomies characteristic of the study of white-collar crime cause many to look elsewhere for their subject matter.

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