The Relevance of White Collar Criminology to Financial Services Regulation
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb025667 |
| Date | 01 February 1995 |
| Published date | 01 February 1995 |
| Pages | 46-48 |
| Author | George Gilligan |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance |
Journal of Financial Crime — Vol. 3 No. 1 — White Collar Crime
WHITE COLLAR CRIME
The Relevance of White Collar Criminology to
Financial Services Regulation
George Gilligan
Most financial services regulators and compliance
professionals arc familiar with the term 'white col-
lar crime', and may have encountered white collar
criminals or examples of white collar crime while
carrying out their regulatory responsibilities. How-
ever, the majority of regulatory or compliance
professionals are unlikely to be familiar with the
origins of the white collar crime label or the spe-
cialist subject area of criminology. This paper
provides a short explanation of the origins of the
white collar crime debate, then briefly considers
some of the dilemmas that arc shared by white
collar criminologists and regulatory professionals,
before detailing some areas in which criminolog-
ical research may have relevance for financial
services regulation.
What arc the origins of criminology and in par-
ticular, white collar criminology? The history of
criminology has been closely entwined with seek-
ing the causes of crime and improving the
efficiency of the criminal justice system since the
discipline first began to develop from the nine-
teenth century writings of European commentators
such as Beccaria, Lombroso and Ferri.1 The his-
tory of white collar criminology is shorter, only 50
years old and owes its origins to the American
sociologist Edwin Sutherland.2 Sutherland believed
that higher social status not only facilitated differ-
ential implementation of the law but also offered
greater opportunities to commit crime, and so he
aimed to foster an integrated analysis of '... crime
in the upper or white collar class'.3 There has been
a widespread acceptance in recent years that white
collar crime is a serious problem which all societ-
ies must address, but the sub-discipline of white
collar criminology spawned by Sutherland's theo-
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