Editorial
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-02-2022-276 |
| Published date | 14 March 2022 |
| Date | 14 March 2022 |
| Pages | 409-412 |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance,Financial risk/company failure,Financial crime |
| Author | Maria Krambia Kapardis |
Editorial
Recasting the concept of the economic criminal
Throughout human history there have been both stereotypes of “the criminal”and, as
Miethe (1987) reminds us, of the offender–victimrelationship. Thus, fear of crime has tended
to be fear of strangers where normally the criminal was a male. Furthermore, as Gabor
(1994) documented in his interesting book titled Everybody Does It!, the general public has
stereotypes of different categories of criminals with armed robbers, for example, being
perceived as having a “tough face”(Macrae,1989). The same cannot, however, be said about
economic criminals, i.e. those offenderswho perpetrate financial crime or illegal acts aimed
at obtaining a financialor professional advantage with economic gain being themain aim, of
course.
The very concept of the “criminal”was undoubtedly recast by Edwin Sutherland when
on the 27th of December in 1939 he addressed the American Sociological Association and
introduced the term “white-collar crime”(WCC). The concept of WCC challenged both
conventional theories of crime and stereotypes of criminals as basically being a low
working-class tough male, socially disadvantaged, from a broken home and a
neighbourhood in decay.That very same stereotype had been
encouraged by sociological (Thrasher, 1927) and criminological (Shaw, 1929) studies
that focused attention on social disorganisation, poverty and crime; and
had been popularised in films.
Sutherland’s concept, however, violated existing prejudices that aristocrats can do no
wrong –which was famously expressed in theancient legal view that a “King could do no
wrong”. It should be noted in this context that other authors before Sutherland (Bonger,
1916;Ross, 1907) had also focusedon offences by businessmen and the elite.
In contrast to the traditional image of the working-class criminal, Sutherland’s
criminal is mainly a middle-class, respectable professional, of high social status who lives
a privileged life in a good neighbourhood and enjoys authority. Interestingly though
Sutherland’s concept never achieved the centrality in criminological research he
proposed. Concerning the heterogeneity of economic criminals, Kapardis and Krambia-
Kapardis (2016, p. 288) found that “the idea of generating one profile that would apply to
all fraud offenders has been proven unrealistic and nonfeasible in view of the
heterogeneity of frauds and fraud offenders”. Criminological studies continued to be
dominated by a focus on common and street crime but ignoring the criminal careers of
white-collar criminals (Weisburd and Waring, 2001) and assuming that white-collar
criminals are repeat offenders (Weisburd et al., 1993). Furthermore, Watkins (1977)
advocated that Sutherland’s high-status offenders when they come into contact with the
criminal justice system, they generallyavoid its most severe penalties.
However, a few decades later (2010–2020), the economic criminal changed from the
individual to the company, and irrespective of country or industry, it seemed that
many company officers were versatile and innovative in the methods used.
Transparency International lists multi-nationals that have “been caught red-handed
in systematic and widespread bribery schemes”, including Airbus, Ericsson,
Odebrecht, Rolls-Royce and Halliburton (Transparency International, 2020). Some
other well-known cases diachronicallyare:
Editorial
409
Journalof Financial Crime
Vol.29 No. 2, 2022
pp. 409-412
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1359-0790
DOI 10.1108/JFC-02-2022-276
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