Crimes of the powerful: Sutherland & white collar crimes.

Sutherland (1940:1) was one of the first criminologists to investigate the crimes of the powerful. He challenged his field by questioning its narrow focus on what the law defined as a felony. In particular, he found that this led to the belief that poverty drove crime.

Criminologists defended the practice as it prevented bias (Michalowski 2008:20), but Sutherland found otherwise. He (1940:2) noted that the data had an in-built bias as it excluded corporate crimes.

These carried criminal penalties like street or property crimes. The courts, though, treated them as civil offences and applied financial fines. That not only hid the true cost of corporate felonies, but also removed the stigma of crime as corporate executives evaded convictions. This led the public to not consider them criminals. 

That was not an accident but by design. Several things helped this. First, lawmakers, for instance, did not see their class peers as criminals. The Department of Justice between 1890 and 1929, for example, convicted on criminal charges more unions, 71%, than businesses, 29%. Second, society was moving away from penal punishment. And, third, the public did not understand corporate crime where consequences did not emerge for a long time. An issue not helped by a corporate media that under-reported the phenomena due to their, or their owners, complicity in said crime.

Thus, the treatment of corporate crime by criminology, the law, the media and the public meant its acceptance as a common business practice. A result that, despite the corporate harm proven in the courts, protected business and their profits (Sutherland 1945:136-9).  

Sutherland (1940:5-11) labelled these violations “white collar crime”. Concluding that one learns crime from one’s environment, not economic status.

His work generated a lot of debate over definitions of crime and how the field justified its work (Lasslett 2010:1). For example, Tappan (qtd in ibid.) claimed Sutherland’s theory was vague, biased and undermined Criminology’s impartiality. A common argument, as Friedrichs (2015:78-82) notes, criminologists use to ignore the crimes of the powerful.

Friedrichs, though, found some issues with Sutherland’s definition. That is, while it included the working classes, it lacked an analysis of the state.

Today’s analysis would tell us that because corporations fulfill the principal goal of the state - to accumulate capital- the latter would not wish to destroy this with the stigma of criminal penalties (Tombs).

Still, Sutherland’s core idea, that the powerful’s influence on the law justifies investigation, advanced the discipline.

References:

Michalowski, R. (2008). Power, crime and criminology in the new imperial age. Crime, Law and Social Change. 51 (3-4). pp. 303–325.

Sutherland, E.H. (1940). White-collar criminality. American Sociological Review. 5 (1). pp. 1–12.

Sutherland, E.H. (1945). Is “White collar Crime” crime? American Sociological Review. 10 (2). pp. 132–139.

Lasslett, K. (2010). Crime or social harm? A dialectical perspective. Crime, Law and Social Change. 54 (1). pp. 1–19.

Friedrichs, D.O. (2015). Crimes of the powerful and the defenition of crime. In: G. Barak (ed.). Routledge international handbook of the crimes of the powerful. London: Routledge, pp. 39–49.