The myth of community tolerance toward white-collar crime
| DOI | 10.1177/000486588702000104 |
| Author | J B Braithwaite,P R Wilson,P N Grabosky |
| Date | 01 March 1987 |
| Published date | 01 March 1987 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
AUST &NZ
JOURNAL
OF
CRIMINOLOGY
(1987) 20 (33-44)
THE MYTH OF COMMUNITY TOLERANCE TOWARD
WHITE-COLLAR CRIME
P N Grabosky*, J B
Braithwaitet
and
P R
Wilsont
33
Introduction
Edwin
Sutherland
(1983), who invented
the
concept of white-collar crime in 1939,
defined it as
"a
crime committed by a
person
of respectability
and
high social status
in
the
course of his occupation" (Sutherland, 1983:7).
One
of Sutherland's central
contentions was
that
white-collar crime is allowed to flourish because of permissive
community attitudes toward it.
The
assumption
that
the
community is
not
particularly concerned
about
white-collar crime may explain, in
part
at least,
the
very neglect of
the
topic by
criminologists
that
Sutherland was attempting to correct. In a survey of articles
published in
the
Australian and New Zealand Journal
of
Criminology
between
1968
and
1977
(O'Connor,
1980), only
one
article on white-collar crime was cited. This
situation has improved since
the
survey was conducted.
Whether
Sutherland's
perception of community tolerance
toward
white-collar
crime was
correct
at
the
time of his 1939 presidential address to
the
American
Sociological Society, we will never know,
but
we now have evidence which casts
serious
doubt
on
the
applicability of this conclusion to
contemporary
societies,
including Australia.
The
purpose of this article is to present this evidence. We begin
by first considering
the
American evidence - a country where much survey
research has
been
done
in
the
area
of white-collar crime -
and
then
move to
evidence from
other
countries before specifically discussing Australia, where
both
research in this
area,
and discussion on
the
phenomenon
generally,
are
fairly recent.
Finally, we
present
the
results of a nationwide survey in Australia on
the
seriousness
of a
number
of criminal offences, including white-collar offences.
The American Evidence
Reviews such as
that
of Conklin (1977) have shown
that
Americans in fact strongly
condemn
white-collar crime. A 1929-1958 longitudinal study of moral
condemnation
of 50 types of behaviour found
that
of
the
nine items which involved
white-collar crime, eight were among
the
25 most disapproved types of behaviour
(charging interest above a fair
rate
for loans, misrepresentation in advertising
medicines, maintaining working conditions which
are
known to be detrimental to
employees'
health,
forgery, acceptance of bribes by legislators, tax
fraud;
and
commission of arson by a landlord to collect insurance)
(Rettig
and
Pasamanick,
1959).
Another
early study by
Newman
(1957) found
that
most members of
the
*PhD Senior Criminologist, Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra.
tPhD Senior Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences,
Australian National University Canberra.
:j: PhD Assistant Director (Research &Statistics), Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra.
The authors wish to acknowledge the contribution by Dr Sat Mukherjee and Mr John Walker, of the
Australian Institute of Criminology, to the construction and analysis of the public opinion survey
referred to in this article.
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