Editor’s Introduction—White-Collar Crime

• DOI: 10.1177/1043986213496380
• Date: 01 August 2013
• Published date: 01 August 2013
• Subject Matter: Articles

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

29(3) 324 –330

© 2013 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/1043986213496380

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Article

Editor’s Introduction—

White-Collar Crime:

Bringing the Offender

Back In1

Over the past two decades criminology has taken a decisive turn toward individual

differences, especially in regards to psychological and cognitive characteristics, as

important explanatory factors in the etiology of criminal behavior. The importance of

individual differences has been made apparent by the increasingly relevant research

of biosocial criminologists, as well as the theories and findings of life course and

developmental criminologists. Yet, as Levi (2013) notes, until quite recently, the prac-

titioners of the biosocial perspective on crime showed little interest in white-collar

crime or white-collar offenders, and white-collar crime scholars have returned the

favor by showing little interest in life course, developmental, or biosocial theory (N.

L. Piquero & Benson, 2004). Indeed, white-collar offenders have long been assumed

to be basically normal people who do not suffer from the psychological or personal

pathologies that seem so common among street offenders (Coleman, 1989; Spencer,

1965; Sutherland, 1949). For many years the only psychological or personality charac-

teristic of white-collar offenders that provoked much interest was their seemingly total

resistance to any attempt to define their activities as crimes (Benson, 1985; Conklin,

1977). Other than their tendency to rationalize and excuse their crimes, the psycho-

logical makeup of white-collar offenders was not thought to be an important dimen-

sion of white-collar crime. The assumptions, however, that white-collar offenders are

psychologically normal and that individual differences have little or nothing to do with

white-collar crime are now being called into question.

A growing body of theory and research suggests that psychological and other indi-

vidual differences matter in regards to involvement in white-collar crime. This emer-

gent interest in white-collar offenders as people has perhaps been spurred by the public

outrage directed at people such as Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andrew Fastow of

Enron, or Bernie Ebbers and Scott Sullivan of WorldCom, or Dennis Kozlowski of

Tyco International. These names are now synonymous with callousness and greed.

Likewise the names Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, AIG, Fannie

Mae, and Freddie Mac automatically bring to mind the image of arrogant rich White

men, men who are somehow different from the rest of us and who will stop at nothing

to enrich themselves. The most recent series of scandals have thrown up identifiable

individuals on whom the public can focus its outrage and about whom academics have

begun to ask a simple question: “Who are these guys?” The theme of this special issue

reflects this emerging trend and the articles presented here each focus on different

aspects of the idea that the individual characteristics matter even in regards to white-

collar offenders.

496380CCJ29310.1177/1043986213496380Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeBenson

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