White-Collar Crime Research

Abstract

One of the theoretical challenges facing scholars is to develop an accepted definition of white-collar crime. The main characteristic is that it is economic crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of an occupation. While Edwin Sutherland’s concept of white-collar crime has enlightened sociologists, criminologists, and management researchers, the concept may have confused attorneys, judges and lawmakers. One reason for this confusion is that white-collar crime in Sutherland’s research is both a crime committed by a specific type of person, and it is a specific type of crime. Later research has indicated, as applied in this book, that white-collar crime is no specific type of crime, it is only a crime committed by a specific type of person.