What is a White-Collar Offender?

• In Event: White-Collar Crime Offenders

Abstract

We attempt to determine the best way to define a white-collar offender by examining what type of offender is different from the typical offender. Sutherland suggested that white collar offenders are high status individuals whose crime involves a violation of trust and commit their offense through the course of their occupation. That definition suggests that the characteristics of offenders are a function of a statistical interaction between status, violations of trust, and whether the crime was committed at work. However, it is possible that only one or two of these elements differentiate white collar offenders. More recent conceptualizations of white collar offenders tend to focus on certain parts of Sutherland's definition, such as emphasizing either those who engage in violations of trust or those whose occupation enables their offense. To compare, Gottfredson and Hirschi suggest that white collar offenders cannot be distinguished from other offenders regardless of how the concept is defined. We address the utility of these alternative definitions by examining, for example, the relationships between the offenders’ prior record and their occupational status, whether they committed their offense at work, and whether they committed fraud. The analyses are based on the State and Federal Survey of Inmates.

Authors

• Andrew Krajewski, Pennsylvania State University

• Richard Felson, Pennsylvania State University