Perceptions of White-Collar Crime Seriousness: Unpacking and Translating Attitudes into Policy Preferences

• Published date: 01 August 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00224278221092094
• Author: Sally S. Simpson,Miranda A. Galvin,Thomas A. Loughran,Mark A. Cohen
• Date: 01 August 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Perceptions of

White-Collar Crime

Seriousness:

Unpacking and

Translating Attitudes

into Policy

Preferences

Sally S. Simpson

1

,

Miranda A. Galvin

2

,

Thomas A. Loughran

3

,and

Mark A. Cohen

4

Abstract

Objectives: Test the role of individual and crime characteristics o n public opin-

ions of white-collar crime seriousness and support for crime reduction pol-

icy; consider the relationship between perceptions of crime seriousness and

1

Distinguished University Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice,

University of Maryland

2

Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, Towson

University

3

Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University

4

Justin Potter Professor of American Competitive Enterprise and Professor of Law at the

Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University

Corresponding Author:

Sally S. Simpson, Distinguished University Professor,Department of Criminology and Criminal

Justice, University of Maryland.

Email: ssimpson@umd.edu

Article

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2023, Vol. 60(5) 582–622

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00224278221092094

journals.sagepub.com/home/jrc

support for public pol icies to reduce white-collar crime. Methods: Data from

a nationally-representative survey. Respondents (n=2,050) rated ten white-

collar crimes, relative to a street crime (burglary) and also indicated their rel-

ative support (i.e., willingness to pay) for 16 policies to reduce various types

of white-collarcrime. Models incorporate respondent-level random effectsto

account for multiple ratings per respondent. Results: Crimes committed by

organizations are perceived more seriously than those committed by individ-

uals. Perceptions of a white-collar crime as more serious than burglary

increase the likelihood of supporting prevention programs. Race and political

party are related to both perceptions of crime seriousness and support for

prevention policy. Conclusions: There may be less consensus around percep-

tions of white-collar crime seriousness than for other crime types.

Perceptions of crime seriousness are a function of both individual and

crime characteristics that structure assessments of risk, harmfulness, and

wrongfulness. Group differences may be related to differences in awareness

of the scope, harms, and perceived victimization risk associated with partic-

ular crime types.

Keywords

Crime seriousness, white collar crime, willingness-to-pay, cognitive frames,

public preferences

The study of public attitudes toward crime and punishment has a long empir-

ical tradition in sociology and criminology beginning with early attempts to

create crime seriousness scales (Clark, 1922; Gorsuch, 1938). Sellin and

Wolfgang’s innovative work (1964) set the modern standard for assessments

of seriousness by developing “a subjective measuring stick for assessing the

severity of delinquent acts based on the judgments of juvenile court judges,

police off‌icers and college students”(Figlio, 1975: 189; see also Stylianou,

2002: 38). Contemporary research seeks to calibrate a common metric of

criminality by examining how specif‌ic characteristics of criminal acts and

their consequences inf‌luence evaluator perceptions of seriousness (Rossi,

Waite, Bose, and Berk, 1974; Sweeten, 2012).

Similarly, studies of punishment also focus on the specif‌ic dimensions of

criminal acts or criminal characteristics that foster greater public punitive-

ness, such as fear of crime, act harm, offender blameworthiness, and

whether empirical f‌indings support a conf‌lict or consensus theoretical frame-

work (Jacoby and Cullen, 1998). A related literature examines public atti-

tudes regarding what constitutes a “just”punishment for offenders (Jasso,

Simpson et al. 583

1998) or attitudes toward particular criminal justice interventions or prac-

tices such as plea-bargaining (see Herzog, 2003/2004), parole (Cohen,

Rust, Steen, 2003), and correctional rehabilitation for juveniles (Nagin,

Piquero, Scott, and Steinberg, 2006). Importantly, these concepts are inti-

mately entangled: seriousness is sometimes understood as a cause of puni-

tiveness and sometimes as its effect. One of our research goals is to clarify

this relationship through a broader policy option lens.

Generally, most research on public perceptions of crime seriousness scru-

tinize conventional crime leaving other offense types (such as white-collar

crime) relatively unexamined. However, white-collar crime is not missing

entirely from the conversation. Some studies examine the relative ranking

of white-collar and conventional offenses over time to assess whether rank-

ings have changed, especially whether there is a trend toward greater per-

ceived white-collar offense seriousness (Wolfgang, 1985; Cullen, Link,

and Polanzi, 1982; Rossi and Berk, 1997). Others examine the degree of

consensus regarding seriousness rankings (Piquero, Carmichael, and

Piquero, 2008; Michel, 2016). Results reveal inconsistencies as to which

white-collar offenses are rated as serious by the public and how they rank

vis-à-vis conventional crimes (for a review of these studies, see Cullen,

Chouhy, and Jonson, 2019). It is unclear whether the observed inconsisten-

cies are methodological artifacts of how scales are constructed, the crime

types described and kinds of comparisons made (Miethe, 1982; Cullen,

Link, Travis, Wozniak, 1985; Kwan, Chiu, Ip, Kwan, 2002; Sweeten,

2012; Michel, 2016) or if results ref‌lect meaningful differences within and

between evaluators (Michel, 2017). Further, although research suggests

that traditionally observed relationships between group membership and

perceptions of seriousness might be different for white-collar crime,

studies have yet to fully explore the ways in which individual differences

shape white-collar crime perceptions,

The perception of white-collar crime seriousness has important implica-

tions for public policy, such as the extent of public support for certain types

of punishment. For instance, what factors increase punitive preferences

when comparing street with white-collar crimes (Michel, 2016)? In addition,

other research investigates whether governmental authorities pay enough

attention to and are given enough resources to combat and control the white-

collar crime problem (see, e.g., Holtfreter, Van Slyke, Bratton, Gertz, 2008;

Huff, Desilets, and Kane, 2010). Yet, in general, research on policy prefer-

ences has been limited to support for criminal punishments without contex-

tualizing this support within a broader policy landscape that might also

include preventative and restitutive elements (for exceptions, see Cohen,

584 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 60(5)