White Collar Crime:
1
Introduction
2 Introduction
Professor Kateryna Kaplun
Third year PhD student in the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice
My research and teaching interests
Cybercrime
Technology and the criminal justice system
White-collar crime
3 This lecture will focus on
Introduction to white-collar crime
Why study white-collar crime?
Researching white-collar crime
Student’s (or any person’s) role
White-collar crime as a concept
The extent of white-collar crime
Consequences of white-collar crime
Public attitudes about white-collar crime
Characteristics of white-collar offenders
4 White Collar Crime
What do these have in common?
Police corruption
Prescription fraud
Slumlords
5 White Collar Crime
What do these have in common?
Police corruption
Prescription fraud
Slumlords
They are all professionals committing a white-collar crime
6 Edwin Sutherland
1939 - first introduced the concept of a white-collar crime
1949 – wrote White Collar Crime where he defined it to be “crime
committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course
of his occupation”
Wanted to show that crimes are committed by people from all social and
economic backgrounds
7 What makes white-collar crime
different from other crimes?
1. Committed during someone’s job
2. The occupational role of the offender
3. The offender’s occupation is viewed as legitimate
8 Why study white-collar crime?
1. Serious problem
2. Affects everyone
3. We can learn more about all types of crime
4. Develop effective prevention and intervention systems and policies
5. Provides more information about careers related to white-collar crime
6. Allows insight into a particular culture and various subcultures
9 Researching white-collar crime
Surveys
Archival research
Field research
Experiments
Case studies
10 Surveys
Methods
On-site surveys
Face-to-face interviews
Telephone surveys
Mail surveys
Online surveys
11 Groups to Survey
Criminal justice officials – to understand how they deal with white-collar crime
Police officers
Court officials
Corrections officers
Members of the public – attitudes about white-collar crime
Victims – what happened to them
Individuals
Businesses and nongovernmental institutions
Government
Offenders – what they did and why they did it
12 Archival Research
Using some sort of record (or archive) as a database in the study
Case records
Hard to obtain
Lot of information
Presentence reports
Hard to obtain
Lot of information on offenders on probation
Media reports
Easy to obtain
Lot less information
13 Field Research
Entering a place to study through observations
Ex: Peter Moskos – graduate student who became a cop
Have to be careful with this
Particularly difficult with white-collar crime
14 Experiments/Quasi Experiments
Research study that tests how a group assigned to two different things differ on
the outcome variable
Example – the effect of a certain training program for individuals who have
been convicted of a white-collar crime
Quasi-experiments are used when it is not possible to have all of the elements of
an experiment
Both are pretty rare in white-collar crime research
15 Case Studies
Focus on constructing everything you know about one (or a few) cases
Pretty common
Can rely on multiple pieces of evidence
Allow for an in depth understanding but are not generalizable
16 Student’s (Really any person’s) Role
1. Former victim
2. Former offender
3. Current victim
4. Current offender
5. Future victim
6. Future offender
7. Future white-collar crime fighter
8. Future policymaker
9. Future research subject
10. Future employee
17 White-Collar Crime as a Concept
Difficult to agree on a universally accepted definition
Although Sutherland is the pioneer of white-collar crime study, he was not
the first social scientist to explore crimes committed by people in the upper
class
E.A. Ross wrote Sin and Society in 1907 which focused on businessmen
being engaged in harmful acts under the mask of being respected
18 Criticisms of Sutherland
1. Conceptual ambiguity
2. Empirical ambiguity
3. Methodological ambiguity
4. Legal ambiguity
5. Policy ambiguity
19 Defining/Conceptualizing White-Collar
Crime
Natural law – a moral or ethical violation
Criminal law – something that is actually criminalized
Civil law – not criminal but against other laws
Regulatory law – against workplace laws
Social harm – something that negatively affects society even if it is not illegal or
deviant
Businesses – socially constructed by what they feel is wrong
Research – definitions used to research things that fall under this category
Official government – government agencies defining these acts for their own
purposes
20 Extent of White-Collar Crime
Hard to know how much white-collar crime actually occurs due to:
1. Not reporting to formal agencies
2. Conceptual ambiguity
These are measurement issues
21 Consequences of White-Collar Crime
Individual economic losses
Societal economic losses
Emotional consequences
Physical harm
“Positive” consequences
22 Public Attitudes Towards White-Collar
Crime
Perceptions of seriousness of these offenses have typically increased over time
Study in 1983 showed people supported criminal sanctions, viewed white collar crime
as having greater moral and economic costs than street crime, and did not view
them as violent
Study in 2008 showed that people believe white collar crime is as serious if not more
serious than street crime but that people believed that street crime offenders were
more likely than white collar offenders to be caught and to receive stiffer sentences
23 Characteristics of White-Collar
Offenders
White collar offenders are more likely than conventional offenders to:
1. Have a college education
2. Be white males
3. Be older
4. Have a job
5. Commit fewer offenses
6. Start their criminal careers later in life
24 White-Collar Offenses
White-collar offenses are more likely than street offenses to be:
1. National or international in scope
2. Involve a large number of victims
3. Have organizations as victims
4. Follow demonstrated patterns
5. Be committed for more than a year
6. Be committed in groups
25 Papers in this Class
3 papers that are different lengths
Final paper will be some new writing and revisions of earlier papers
We will discuss writing and sources in class
Start thinking about television show or film that have enough about white-
collar crime for you to use for all three papers
26 Looking Ahead
Systems with Crime
Criminological Theory
1. Occupational
Systems of Prevention 2. Healthcare
1. Policing 3. Criminal Justice
4. Political
2. Courts 5. Religious
3. Corrections 6. Educational
7. Economic
Past, present, and future 8. Housing
trends 9. Corporate
10. Environmental crime
