This concept violated existing prejudices that high-ranking persons would not or only in highly exceptionally circumstances commit crimes and that economic crimes were due to ‘merely technical violations’, which ‘involve no moral culpability’. 4 Sutherland, who had among other things previously worked on juvenile delinquents in ghettos of recent immigrants, pointed to certain parallels such as the influence of cultural milieus.
The assessment of the offences committed in the corporate world began to change in light of the theories of sociologist and criminologist Edwin Hardin Sutherland, who not only established the criminological term ‘white-collar crime’ in 1939, but also made clear that crimes were not exclusively committed by lower-class offenders. In some countries, white-collar criminals can still expect much lower sentences than other types of criminals. There was also the impression that white-collar crime was victimless and not as damaging to society as offences like robbery. They were not part of what was considered the criminal milieu in a narrow sense. Historically, it took a long time to categorise this kind of malfeasance under the rubric of crime, because people who committed white-collar crimes were not perceived as ‘typical criminals’ who engaged in theft, manslaughter, or murder. White-collar crime, then, typically encompasses the following offences committed mainly by corporations, their owners, executives or employees as well as by government or municipal officials and members of the professions: fraud, corruption, embezzlement, misappropriation and malfeasance, tax fraud, intellectual property theft, insider trading, money laundering, Ponzi schemes, misrepresentation of financial statements, price-fixing, illegal cartels, and collusion as well as the breach of environmental, health and safety regulations. To circumvent the arduous task of crafting a reasonably useful definition, many authors take refuge to a non-systematic case-by-case approach and work with a list of relevant crimes. In this issue, we will use the terms ‘white-collar crime’ and ‘economic crime’ interchangeably.
The article introduces the special issue and discusses methods and approaches suited to analysing ‘shady business’.įor all the attention white-collar crime has been receiving recently, 2 no generally accepted scholarly definition of this subject exists. The history of white-collar crime draws attention to the intersection of business and the law, and to its interaction with innovation, moral discourse and public perception, as well as with the changing nature of state policies during the past two centuries. It also highlights additional aspects for a working definition which can be applied to various and even rapidly changing historical contexts. It names six characteristics of white-collar crime, namely the preponderance of upper and middle-class delinquents, the motivation of financial gain, non-violence, systemic character, the breach of trust, and diffuse victimisation.
It discusses how to define white-collar crime and how to analyse it. The article invites readers to explore the historical dimensions of these very specific offences. White-collar crime is a daily topic in the news but by no means a new phenomenon.