White Collar Crime Revision

White collar crime is very topical now, with all the furore over MPs’ expenses. Are MPs’ guilty of excessive claims in fact whilte collar criminals? Here are some revision notes to help you decide.

White Collar Crime

Edwin Sutherland defined white collar crime as:

“Crimes committed by persons of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupations.”
White Collar crime – we probably all have some idea that its about professional people who commit crime, but why does it seem less of a problem somehow, or a side issue?

Well, for a start:

•It is hard to detect
•You often need expert knowledge to identify crimes, e.g. Fraud, Insider dealing, Computer Crime
•It can be hard to notice if a crime has occurred – Fraud, Tax fraud, shop theft

Then there are often good reasons why businesses and others don’t want to talk about white collar crime:

•Firms may not want to admit they have been victims of theft – effect on business
•Firms may not want to admit that their staff have committed a crime

On the part of the police and the law:

•Police devote few resources to identifying white collar crime
•White collar crimes seen as less serious than other offences
•It’s easier for white collar criminals to conceal their crimes
•This makes it more difficult for the police to investigate white collar offences
•White collar crime often occurs on private property, rarely any violence involved – seems less serious- police priority is public order
•White collar crime is treated ambiguously in the law – unclear whether it should be a criminal or civil offence

And finally, society in general tends to have an ambiguous view of white collar crime:

•White collar crime is often not considered to be crime – people ofte talk about perks of the job
•Many white collar offences may be defined as civil rather than criminal matters.

But one issue we should bear in mind in all this is:

•Who has power to make these judgements?

In all the focus on how much white collar crime there is, its easy to forget to be critical of the concept itself – is it a useful category? There really is room for debate here; it can be argued that it is useful and that it directs our attention to other forms of crime, issues of power, and the socially constructed nature of crime and deviance.
However, the category is not foolproof and various criticisms have been made of it, and especially of Sutherland’s definition, quoted at the start.

For instance, what about:

•Occupational crime – crimes committed by professionals in the course of their occupation
•Corporate crime – crimes committed by companies or businesses, e.g. pollution, fraud, corporate manslaughter
•Crimes of the powerful
•Crimes of the state – Muncie and McLaughlin – war crimes, genocide, pollution, human rights violations

Are these all the same sort of act? Some would say not, and argue that the category of white collar crime has to be further developed.
But arguably, the concept is useful and important because it challenges our view of crime and suggests that crime is far more widespread and not confined to particular social classes. More than that though, it suggests that traditional theories of crime have a distorted/biased view of crime and lack validity, since they always seem to assume that criminal acts are predominantly working class. Even if this is argued in order to show the class bias of the law, it nevertheless means that a considerable portion of criminal activity remains hidden from sociological view. The concept of white collar crime suggests that we need to think more carefully about who has the power to define actions as criminal/non-criminal.