Sutherland, Cleckley and Beyond: White-Collar Crime and Psychopathy

Abstract

Scholarship on white-collar crime by Edwin Sutherland and on psychopathy by Hervey Cleckley influenced criminological and behavioral research on personality traits in the twentieth century and beyond. Over seventy years have passed since their publications, yet white-collar crime scholarship historically and personality traits associated with such offenders to date remains sparse despite the enormity of damage caused by this crime. The authors' analysis contributes to a clearer historical understanding of why empirical white-collar crime scholarship aimed at developing a white-collar offender profile(s) is highly underrepresented in the behavioral and criminological fields relative to non-white-collar crime. The authors found that a plausible partial explanation for the lack of research can be traced to 1) Sutherland's antagonistic view toward the contributions by the behavioral disciplines, 2) minimizing scholarship advocating a multiple factor approach to understanding criminal behavior, and 3) rejection of an inferential statistical methodology applied to criminological research. Secondly, due to Sutherland's legacy on the direction and method of criminological scholarship, the authors find that Sutherland's ambivalence on the role of personality traits and psychopathy in relation to criminal behavior stymied criminological research for over half a century on the development of a white-collar offender profile(s). Moreover, since Cleckley, sparse empirical scholarship by the behavioral sciences has failed to examine the potential implications of psychopathy's role as a white-collar offender behavioral risk factor giving rise to misperceptions about this offender class.

Financial crime – is there any way out of the theoretical deadlock?

“…It is a predator who has achieved top managerial position and accumulated considerable wealth, but who nevertheless seeks an opportunity to commit crime (Dorminey et al , 2010, p. 21). Field studies have revealed dangerous psychopathic traits among financial offenders like notorious ignorance of rules, emotional coldness and narcissism (Perri et al , 2014, p. 83). At the same time, they were observed to be highly self-organised and educated, able to manipulate peers, circumvent controls and prevent detection (Babiak and O’Toole, 2012).…”

Red Collar Crime

“…This misperception persisted for many decades because scholars in the various social and behavioral sciences failed to apply the criminal thinking traits to white-collar offenders as contrasted to non-white-collar offenders. Criminological scholarship focused more on conventional crimes such as violence, narcotics and property related offenses (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 2011) as well as examining social processes within an organization that might serve as risk factors for fraud to flourish (Sutherland, 1949) while rejecting individual personality traits as potential fraud offender risk factors (Perri, Lichtenwald, & Mieczkowska, 2014). Both non-white-collar and white-collar offenders display consistent criminal thought patterns and attitudes about others and/or situations to exploit and these thought patterns apply to considering violence as a solution to a perceived problem regardless of one's socio-economic standing (Samenow, 1984).…”

“…Edwin Sutherland, albeit erroneously, rejected the notion that individual behavioral proclivities and personalities contributed to the understanding of criminality, focusing instead on group dynamics to explain why individuals succumbed to crime and white-collar crime (Perri, Lichtenwald, & Mieczkowska, 2014). Sutherland's position is ironic in light of the fact that he believed white-collar offenders "are by far the most dangerous to society of any type of criminals from the point of view of effects on private property and social institutions" (Sutherland, 1934, p. 32).…”

Increased Frontal Lobe Volume as a Neural Correlate of Gray-Collar Offending

“…In the first introduction to the notion of white-collar crime, Sutherland (1940) described it as a crime committed by an individual of respectability and high social status during the course of his or her occupation. Although his original conceptualization emphasized individual characteristics (e.g., respectability, high social status), his white-collar research focused on sanctions against corporations, and sociological and macrolevel influences such as criminogenic corporate cultures have been the predominant explanations for white-collar criminality, while personality and individual differences have been less emphasized (Friedrichs 2009; Perri 2013; Perri, Lichtenwald, and Mieczkowska 2014). However, there have been efforts to demonstrate that, in addition to the traditionally studied cultural and opportunistic factors of white-collar offending, personality traits and individual differences are important to consider in the etiology of white-collar offending (Collins and Schmidt 1993; Piquero, Exum, and Simpson 2005; Simpson 2013).…”