Foundational Concepts

White Collar Crime

Citation Formats

General Reference

Crime and Justice Atlas. "White Collar Crime." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://crime.interactiveatlas.org/concepts/white-collar-crime.

APA Style

Crime and Justice Atlas. (n.d.). White Collar Crime. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://crime.interactiveatlas.org/concepts/white-collar-crime

BibTeX

@misc{crimeandjusticeatlas-white-collar-crime,
  author = {Crime and Justice Atlas},
  title = {White Collar Crime},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://crime.interactiveatlas.org/concepts/white-collar-crime},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

A term coined by Edwin Sutherland for crimes committed by respectable individuals of high social status in the course of their profession, such as fraud and embezzlement, distinguishing them from crimes typically associated with lower socioeconomic status.

Facts

Domainthe subject's own account

Criminology 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Corporate Crime

Corporate crime is offending by an organization itself; white collar crime, in Sutherlands original sense, is offending by an individual of high social status in the course of an occupation. The two overlap heavily and are often used loosely as synonyms.

Source Wikipedia: Corporate Crime

Forensic Accounting

Forensic accounting is the principal investigative discipline used against white collar and corporate financial crime.

Source Wikipedia: Forensic Accounting

Informed

Differential Association Theory

Sutherland developed differential association partly to explain the white-collar crime he had documented, arguing criminal behavior is learned like any other, regardless of social class.

Source Wikipedia: Edwin Sutherland