White-collar crime
Definition
Crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation (Sutherland, 1939). The category covers fraud, embezzlement, insider trading, bribery, and similar offences. Later scholars debated whether the definition should focus on the offender's status or the act's characteristics.
Related terms
- Corporate crime
- Illegal acts committed by or on behalf of a corporate organisation for the organisation's benefit. Distinct from occupational crime because the wrongdoing...
- Cybercrime
- Offences where a computer network is the tool or the target. Tool-based cybercrime includes fraud, harassment, and intellectual property theft conducted online....
- Enterprise theory
- A theoretical framework that analyses organised crime as a rational business enterprise responding to market conditions. Associated with criminologist Dwight Smith, who...
- Neutralisation techniques
- The vocabulary of justifications identified by Sykes and Matza (1957) by which offenders deny the wrongfulness of their acts: denial of injury,...
- Organised crime
- A structured group of three or more persons that operates continuously, with the aim of committing serious offences for material benefit, and...
Explained in
- Organised, White-Collar, Corporate, and CybercrimeCrime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation (Sutherland, 1939). The category covers fraud, embezzlem...