White-collar crime: Edwin Sutherland's definition and corporate examples

White-Collar Crime

The two distinct elements of "white-collar crime," which Edwin Sutherland described as "crimes committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation," are (1) the offender's social status and (2) the occupation/mechanism "by which the offense is committed" (Rosoff, Pontell, Tillman, 2003, p. 3). Essentially, Sutherland viewed white collar criminals as members of a higher class than the "ordinary" blue-collar criminal or street criminal that one normally associated with various crimes, such as murder, rape or theft. Yet the white-collar criminal was capable of these crimes also: it just so happened that when he broke the law, his offense could go undetected because it was, one, less visible, and, two, protected within a world of autonomous functioning (high finance, for example); here, one was only "outed" if a scapegoat was needed or if one's offense offended the wrong people, such as happened with Bernie Madoff, one of only many finance managers whose Ponzi-scheme activities actually went "noticed" (Schultz, Greenberg, 2009) because it lost some very wealthy people a lot of money (like director Steven Spielberg) rather than a lot of common, ordinary people their pension funds.

The case of Bernie Madoff would be an example of consumer fraud, because Madoff had deceived his customer clients of the actual nature of their investment, promising safety and security where there was none. Madoff was capable of deceiving his wealthy clients because of his status in the finance world (high social status) and he was able to commit the offense by way of his occupation, which allowed him to follow the example of the original financial speculator criminal, Charles Ponzi. Madoff's losses to investors was said to have been approximately $18 billion (Safer, 2009). These losses resulted from the high exposure of various clients, including other hedge funds and elites. Madoff's Ponzi scheme was like gambling with the wrong people's money. Another example of consumer fraud would be the case of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) which engaged in price fixing of lysine with competitors around the world with an estimated cost of $100 million (Eichenwald, 2000).

In terms of environmental crime, white-collar crime could refer to any offense committed in violation of laws designed to protect the environment and the people within a certain environment. In many cases, this is called "green-collar crime" because of its relationship to the earth. One of the strongest cases of white collar crime as environmental crime is that of Monsanto, the cancer-causing, genetically-modified organisms producer of unnatural food stuffs and Round-Up, which California has just labeled as a cancer-causing agent (Durden, 2015). But Monsanto has been the subject of many researchers ire for many years, including independent journalist William Engdahl (2007) in his book Seeds of Destruction, which chronicles the rise of Monsanto due to the protection of other persons in "high society" such as the President of the United States and the "laws" passed which criminalized any study into the negative effects of Monsanto's products rather than any activity by Monsanto itself (Engdahl, 2007). This perverse inversion of the law (now written to protect the offender instead of the public and/or environment victimized by the offender) illustrates just how protected white-collar criminals have become in American society. It is a country that is for, by, and of the white-collar criminal class. The cost of Monsanto's "green-collar" crime has been estimated in the billions, though the number is actually unknown because as of yet the GMO-giant has not been convicted (Engdahl, 2007).

An example of white-collar crime in the realm of religious fraud would be when the comptroller of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo was convicted of "embezzlement of eight million dollars of money belonging to the Diocese" (Fleckentstein, Bowes, 2000, p. 111). This is a case of white-collar crime operating under the guise of a non-profit church or religions institution like the Catholic Church, which accepts donations from members of parishes. Here, the comptroller of the Diocese was taking advantage of that income for his own purposes rather than for the good of the Church and those connected with it. The cost of the crime was in the millions, a significant sum for a single diocese and a considerable achievement for a single embezzler. White collar crime under the front of religious activity can have greater costs than simply monetary cost, however. Because the church is based on giving a good example to people, such crimes could actually undermine the faith that people develop based on the example of the church and thereby when embezzlers are found in high positions, it makes one wonder how they got there and whether they were protected. One's faith, therefore, can be another cost in this sector, and in fact the loss of faith can be measure, to some extent, by the decline in church attendance, reception of sacraments, etc. This example reminds us that there are psychological and social costs to white collar crime when the crime is actually exposed to the public.