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Public knowledge about white-collar crime: an exploratory study

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Abstract

A growing body of research has revealed that the financial cost and physical harmfulness of white-collar crime overshadow the impact of street crime on society. To date, scholarly efforts that have investigated societal response to crimes of the powerful have limited their field of inquiry to public opinions about white-collar crime. Although these studies have provided valuable empirical evidence of a growing concern among U.S. citizens regarding the danger posed by elite offenses, their failure to include a valid measure of lay knowledge about white-collar crime significantly limits our ability to infer the extent to which the public is familiar with the scope and magnitude of this social issue. The present study seeks to address such limitations by providing the first measure of public knowledge about white-collar crime. Four hundred and eight participants completed an online questionnaire that measured their knowledge about white-collar crime. Results revealed that participants were not sufficiently informed about it and suggest the existence of popular “myths” about crimes of the powerful. These findings have important implications insofar as white-collar crime awareness programs are concerned. Hypothetically, public demand for tougher sanctions against high-status offenders could result from exposure to relevant information about white-collar crime. Nevertheless, “myth” adherence might also undermine the effect of increased awareness on prosecutorial efforts against upper-class criminality.

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Notes

  1. Readers may find this item ambiguous as religious leaders/organizations can actually engage in white-collar crime. Similarly, corporations can themselves be the victims of white-collar offenders. Nevertheless, we choose to remain faithful to Sutherland’s original definition, which clearly focused on the occupation of the perpetrators.

  2. We chose not to use a larger monetary amount - one commonly observed in high-scale white-collar crime cases for instance - because it would not have been realistically applicable to street crime for comparison purposes.

  3. Our decision to include medical crime was based on (1) pressure for profit in medical corporations increasing the frequency of malpractice, and (2) corporate negligence when a hospital fails to ensure professional competence among its employees. As such, we maintain that medical crime can be defined as white-collar crime.

  4. This question was designed to assess if respondents were aware of the existence of human trafficking in developed countries; it was not intended to suggest that the prevalence of human trafficking is more prevalent in developed countries. Still, consistent with the white-collar crime construct, seemingly respectable corporations may connive with organized crime to obtain cheap workforce. In California, for example, the 2012 Business Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act requires companies to make public disclosures of their efforts to ensure that their supply chains are free from forced labor and human trafficking.

  5. A reviewer noted that overcompliance is actually a current source of corporate rivalry. However, we still rely on years of green criminology research (see, e.g., Stretesky et al. [94]. The treadmill of crime: Political economy and green criminology. Routledge) to support our claim that, although admittedly better than it was, the trend for corporations and states alike (e.g., Florida) is far from being overly supportive of clean renewable energy.

  6. It should be noted that these labels are used simply as conceptual devices to categorize/sort respondents. Readers should not infer from them that we are judging participants when they seemingly refuse to accept empirical facts.

  7. A reviewer asked how many questions a subject had to answer correctly and with confidence to be labeled a “truth accepter” as opposed to a “lucky guesser.” We did not look at that. Moreover, the same subjects could accept some truths but deny others. This is definitely a question that future research will want to address.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Tampa, 401, W. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, FL, 33606-1490, USA

    Cedric Michel

  2. Department of Criminology, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., SOC 107, Tampa, FL, 33620-8100, USA

    John K. Cochran & Kathleen M. Heide

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  1. Cedric Michel
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Michel, C., Cochran, J.K. & Heide, K.M. Public knowledge about white-collar crime: an exploratory study. Crime Law Soc Change 65, 67–91 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-015-9598-y

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