Hoorcollege 1
Hoofdstuk 1 – What is white-collar crime?
In both examples, a professional uses his or her superior knowledge and expertise to take
advantage of someone. Fraud is not limited to medicine and real estate. It can occur in every
profession. It represents one of the most common types of white-collar crime, but there are
many other types of white-collar crime. Although there are good reasons to believe that the
frauds discussed earlier and other white-collar type of crimes are more common now than
they have ever been, it would be a mistake to think that white-collar crime is a new
invention of the criminal mind. Unfortunately, criminals have engaged in white-collar type
crimes for literally thousands of years.
Sutherland’s definition of white-collar crime
Sutherland defined white-collar crime as “a crime committed by a person of respectability
and high social status in the course of his occupation”. This definition is unusual in that it
refers to characteristics of the actor (the definition is usually about the acts not the actor).
Sutherland’s approach, however, tells us that only certain types of people can commit white-
collar crimes, those with respectability and high social status. It also specifies that the act
must arise out of the course of the actor’s occupation. For Sutherland, these factors
determine whether an illegality is a white-collar crime.
From the start, Sutherland’s approach to white-collar crime provoked criticism and
controversy.
One issue concerns the legal status of white-collar type offenses. A distinguishing
feature of Sutherland’s approach was his willingness to include acts that had been
sanctioned through civil or administrative legal proceedings as part of white-collar crime.
This decision provoked extensive comment and criticism from legal scholars who contended
that only acts that were punished under criminal law can rightly be called crimes. In
Sutherland’s view, however, including other types of violations was justified because many
civil laws deal with practices that are fundamentally similar to criminal offenses. In addition,
many illegal business practices can be sanctioned under either criminal or civil law or both.
To exclude offenses that are pursued under civil law arbitrarily limits the range of white-
collar offenses. This limitation is especially important in the context of white-collar crime,
because the organizations and individuals who commit these offenses often use their
political power and economic resources to avoid criminal prosecutions.
Another major point of contention that arose out of Sutherland’s approach is
whether the offender’s social status should be a defining characteristic of white-collar crime.
Sutherland included respectability and high social status in his definition precisely because
he wanted to draw attention to the criminality of business groups. He argued that the
criminological theories of his day were class biased and incomplete because they equated
crime with lower-class individuals and ignored crime by upper-class individuals. In addition,
he was morally outraged by what he regarded as the lenient and preferential treatment
afforded to business offenders in the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, including social
status and respectability in the definition of white-collar crime created problems for
research and analysis. One problem that arises if social status is a defining element of crime
is that it cannot then be used to explain or predict the occurrence of the crime. Thus, by
definition fiat, white-collar crime researchers are prevented from investigating how the
,social status of individuals influences the types or the seriousness of the white-collar type
offenses they commit. Similar offenses may be committed by corporate executives and by
employees at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy, but only the former meet Sutherland’s
definition of white-collar crime. It is important to investigate how social status is related to
white-collar crime, just as we investigate how it is related to ordinary street crime. The
question of how social status is related to white-collar crime should not be decided
arbitrarily by definitional fiat. Indeed, a major theme of this book is that social status is
important precisely because it influences access to opportunities for white-collar crime and
it is likely to influence offender motivation too. White-collar crime opportunities are
differentially distributed by gender, race, ethnicity and status. Including social status in the
definition of white-collar crime also rules out the possibility of exploring how variation in the
status of offenders influences societal reactions to their offenses. In order to investigate
these issues, white-collar crime must be defined in a status-neutral manner.
Offender-based and offense-based definitions
Sutherland’s definition is the most well-known and influential example of what has been
called the offender-based approach to defining white-collar crime. Offender-based
definitions emphasize as an essential characteristic of white-collar crime the high social
status, power and respectability of the actor.
The offense-based approach defines white-collar crime based on the nature of the
illegal act. in 1970, Herbert Edelhertz, then an official at the U.S. Department of Justice,
proposed a highly influential offense-based definition of white-collar crime. He defined
white-collar crime as “an illegal act or series of illegal acts committed by non-physical means
and by concealment or guile to obtain money or property, to avoid the payment or loss of
money or property, or to obtain business or personal advantage. Another prominent white-
collar scholar proposed that white-collar crime be defined as “a violation of the law
committed by a person or group of persons in the course of an otherwise respected and
legitimate occupation or financial activity”. This definition does not refer to the status or
respectability of the actor and expands the location of white-collar crime so as to include
non-occupation but presumably legitimate financial activities.
Offense-based definitions have proved popular with researchers for several reasons.
Because no mention is made of the social status of the actor or the social location of the act,
both status and location are free to vary independently of the definition of the offense and
can be used as explanatory variables. Also, offense-based definitions make it easier for
researchers to draw examples of white-collar offenders from official data sources, such as
court conviction records. Researchers need only identify a set of statutory offenses that
meet certain formal criteria – for example that are not physical and that are based on
deception. Then, it is just a matter of sampling individuals convicted of those offenses.
Despite it’s popularity with some researchers, the offense-based approach to white-
collar crime raises troubling issues for many other white-collar crime scholars. The very ease
with which offense-based definitions can be used to draw samples becomes a trap for
investigators leading them to miss or ignore the most important aspects of the white-collar
crime phenomenon. Investigators who use offense-based definitions often end up studying
the relatively minor misdeeds of ordinary people of very modest financial means who
somehow become caught up in the criminal justice system. Offense-based definitions
trivialize the whole concept of white-collar crime, leading researchers, politicians, and law
enforcers to neglect the most serious forms of elite crime. Even more important, with its
,focus on money and property, Edelhertz’s definition turns attention away from the types of
white-collar crime that do physical harms to people. For example, among the most serious
white-collar crimes are illegal discharge of hazardous waste into the environment,
manufacture of dangerous products, and the causing of death, injury of illness of workers via
unsafe working conditions. Such crimes rarely appear in studies that follow Edelhertz’s
approach to defining white-collar crime. It is almost impossible to use the offense-based
approach to study crimes of large multinational corporations, because they are almost never
actually charged with criminal violations, let alone convicted. Thus, the major criticism of the
offense-based approach is that in practice, it misses the crimes of the powerful, who simply
sidestep the criminalization process. The very people that Sutherland originally sought to
bring to the attention of criminologists are ignored. Substituted in their place are small-time
con men and cheating welfare moms.
The key point to keep in mind is that regardless of the characteristics of the
individuals involved, white-collar crimes are committed using particular techniques. That is,
they rely upon a certain modus operandi. The characteristics of the individuals who commit
these offenses are important insofar as they influence access to the opportunities to use
these techniques. As we argue throughout this book, many of the characteristics that are
part of offender-based definitions (e.g. high social status, respectability, elite occupational
positions) are indeed important precisely because they provide offenders with access to
opportunities for white-collar crime.
The offender-based and offense-based approaches to defining white-collar crime are
not contradictory or mutually exclusive. Rather, they simply emphasize different aspects of a
general empirical regularity involving the characteristics or social positions of individuals and
the types of offenses that they tend to commit.
The social and occupational characteristics of white-collar offenders are important in
another way as well. These characteristics are related to the seriousness of the offenses that
offenders commit. In regard to criminal offenses, seriousness has two primary dimensions:
the harmfulness of the offense and the blameworthiness of the offender. The white-collar
offenses of high-status individuals who hold positions of power in large organizations tend to
be more serious than those of other types of individuals. Adopting a research strategy that
ends up focusing only on small business owners is a mistake, but it is also a mistake to focus
exclusively on multinational corporations. Similar offenses may occur at all levels of business
activity. We must be careful, though, not to overstress the notion of similarity. Just because
similar offenses may occur across a broad range of levels of economic organization does not
mean that they necessarily have the same causes and consequences.
Measuring white-collar crime
Measuring white-collar crime poses both conceptual and practical challenges. Conceptually,
the challenge is that what counts as white-collar crime depends on whether you define the
term using an offense-based definition or an offender-based definition. Offense-based
definitions result in a much larger number of cases than do offender-based definitions.
It is also important to recognize that organizations, as well as individuals, can be
charged with an convicted of white-collar crimes, and it is not uncommon for both the
corporation and individual executives to be charged in regard to a particular offense. When
both individuals and organizations are linked in such a manner, determining the number of
offenders and offenses becomes problematic.
, On a practical level, the major challenge for those who would measure white-collar
crime is that there is no single centralized agency responsible for recording instances of
white-collar crime. Not only are official data on white-collar offenses and white-collar
offenders scattered across a bewilderingly large array of regulatory and law enforcement
agencies, the mechanics required to merge these diverse indicators and measures into a
single data source are considerable. There are other practical problems when it comes to
counting white-collar crimes committed in organizational or corporate settings. White-collar
crime cases, especially those involving corporations or other business entities, can be subject
to three different types of control, including the criminal, civil and administrative justice
systems. Should regulatory and civil violations be included, as Sutherland recommended? Or
should the domain of corporate crime be limited to violations of the criminal law? Criminal
fines seem to account for a low percentage of all the federal actions taken against
companies. For a variety of reasons, we agree with those who argue that civil and regulatory
violations should be included as part of white-collar and corporate crime, but we note that
this makes comparisons between white-collar and street crime difficult if not entirely
inappropriate.
Hoofdstuk 2 – Who is the white-collar offender
The Yale studies on white-collar crime
A group of researchers led by Stanton Wheeler of Yale University conducted a study of
white-collar offenders in the federal judicial system. From these investigations, an
interesting picture of the people who commit crimes of deception has emerged. Some of
these people clearly are white-collar offenders in Sutherland’s sense of the term, but many
of them are not.
The Yale researchers began by identifying eight offenses in the federal criminal code
that most scholars and lay people would agree were white-collar type crimes. What is
important is that these are offenses that are committed by concealment and deception
rather than by brute physical force. The researchers gathered data from the presentence
investigation report (PSI). The PSI is a document prepared by a federal probation officer
whenever an offender is convicted in federal court. Federal judges use PSIs when they make
decisions about sentencing. Regarding the offense, the PSI informs the judge about the
official charges to which the defendant has pled guilty. But in addition to the official charge,
the PSI contains a “defendant’s version of the offense” and an “official version of the
offense”. The PSI is a good source of data. It can be used to find out who commits white-
collar types of crimes and to compare these people to those who commit common street
crimes. In short we can use it to investigate many important questions about white-collar
offenders and white-collar crimes.
The Yale researchers acknowledged four shortcomings in their research design. First,
they studies only eight federal offenses. There are many other federal offenses that could
conceivable be called white-collar crimes. Second, the researchers studied only seven
federal districts. These two shortcomings raise the possibility that if we were looking at a
different sample, we might see a different portrait of the white-collar offender. Whether a
sample is representative of all the possible cases from which it is drawn is a common
problem in social science research. The best way to address this shortcoming is to look at
more than one sample. If the results from different samples converge, then we can have
much more confidence in them than we could from a single observation point. Luckily, at the
same time that the Yale researchers were conducting their study, several other
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