ABSTRACT

In his de nition of white-collar crime and in his many writings on the subject, Sutherland described the white-collar o ender as a person of respectability and high social status who commits an o ense during the course of his or her occupation. If we follow Sutherland’s approach, then the question posed in the title of this chapter is already partially answered. e white-collar o ender is a respectable person of high social status. Of course, what Sutherland meant by “respectable” and “high social status” is not completely clear, but he did indicate that by white-collar he meant to refer to “business managers and executives” (Sutherland, 1983). If we thought about it for a bit, we could probably come up with de nitions for the terms respectable and high social status that would make sense conceptually. To answer the question, then, of who is the white-collar o ender, we would have to identify individuals who t our de nitions and who engage in occupationally related crime. We would want to know what it is that distinguishes respectable high-social-status people who are honest from those who are dishonest. Sutherland had a theory about the answer to this question. Other theories have been put forward by other scholars. We discuss these theories in the next chapter, but for now, we want to consider what happens if we don’t use Sutherland’s de nition.