Who Counts White-Collar Crime · Crime Lab 1 · Midwestern State University
Every count of white-collar crime starts with a definition, and the definitions do not agree. Benson and Simpson's first chapter gives you two families: definitions built around the offender (who did it) and definitions built around the offense (how it was done). This lab puts twelve real events from the last two years in front of you and asks you to run each one through three definitions. The point is not to find the right definition. The point is to see, event by event, what each definition keeps and what it throws away. Work in pairs, but each of you submits your own response sheet at the end of class.
The three definitions you will use
Read each one and find its hinge, the single requirement that will do the most sorting work. Then answer the quick check at the bottom before you move on.
Quick check. A person with no job lies on a public benefits application and collects money. Which definition is the only one that clearly counts it?
Edelhertz. The act is nonphysical, it uses concealment, and it obtains money. That is the whole test. Sutherland needs status and an occupation, and this person has neither. Reiss and Biderman need a position inside a legitimate institution, and there is none. Benson and Simpson make exactly this example the warning label on offense-based definitions: if you use Edelhertz, "someone who lies on a welfare application could be a white-collar offender." Keep that in mind as you sort. An offense-based definition counts more and counts lower.
Definitions are quoted as they appear in Benson and Simpson, Understanding White-Collar Crime: An Opportunity Perspective (2015), chapter 1, which is this week's reading. Original sources: Sutherland, E. H. (1940). White-collar criminality. American Sociological Review, 5(1), 1 to 12. Edelhertz, H. (1970). The Nature, Impact and Prosecution of White-Collar Crime. National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice. Reiss, A. J., and Biderman, A. D. (1981). Data Sources on White-Collar Law-Breaking. National Institute of Justice.
Twelve events, three definitions
Each event below is real and was resolved or charged between 2024 and 2026. Each carries a line naming the charges actually brought or the law actually used, because whether an act was treated as a crime, a civil violation, or an administrative matter is part of what you are sorting. For each one, decide whether it counts as white-collar crime under each of the three definitions. Once you have made all three calls for an event, the reference call appears with reasoning. Some reference calls are marked arguable. Those are not errors in the answer key. They are places where the definition itself does not settle the question, and they are the events you will write about in your response sheet.
0 of 12 events sorted.
How many count?
Twelve events went in. Before you see the totals, commit to a guess for the strictest definition.
Under Sutherland's definition, how many of the twelve events clearly count? (Arguable calls are excluded from this number.)
Reference calls
Your calls
Look at which events fell out of each definition. Sutherland loses the romance scam and the benefits fraud outright, and it wavers on the bookkeeper, the researcher, and the ransomware pair. Those are the offenses of people without high status, or people whose status was not the instrument of the offense. Edelhertz keeps nearly everything, including the benefits fraud and the overseas scam, and it wavers in only two situations: where the harm was physical (the sewer discharge, the mill explosion) and where no court ever called the act illegal (the falsified science). Reiss and Biderman split the difference by asking one question, whether the offender used a position inside a legitimate institution, and that question drops exactly three events: the scam, the ransomware attacks, and the benefits fraud.
This is the general regularity Benson and Simpson describe. The two approaches are not contradictory. The techniques Edelhertz names, misrepresentation and concealment for gain, are used far more often by people who hold positions of trust, because those positions supply the opportunity. Status matters because it opens doors to the technique, not because the technique requires it. That is why the three definitions agree on the attorney, the senator, the pharmacist, and the corporation, and disagree at the edges, where either the status or the technique is missing.
The count is the consequence. Benson and Simpson note that offense-based definitions produce far more cases than offender-based ones. You just saw why. A research study, a government statistic, or a news claim about how much white-collar crime there is has already made this choice, usually without saying so. When you read one, the first question is which of these twelve kinds of events it was set up to see.
Occupational or corporate?
Clinard and Quinney (1973) drew a line that runs through every definition above. Occupational crime is committed by an individual in the course of a job, for the individual's own benefit, and often at the expense of the employer. Corporate crime is committed by officers or employees on behalf of the organization, for the organization's benefit. Sort the eight events that clearly involve a legitimate occupation or organization.
Notice who was punished in each column. Every occupational offender here was an individual who went to prison or lost standing. In the corporate column, the waste plant managers and the mill's managers went to prison, but the largest case by far, Amazon at $2.5 billion, ended in a civil settlement with no admission of wrongdoing and no individual charged. The hospitality companies paid back wages and nothing else. The line between occupational and corporate is also, in practice, a line between people who get prosecuted and organizations that get fined. Unit 4 comes back to this.
Lab 1 response sheet
Answer the four questions below in complete sentences. Then use the button at the bottom to assemble your answers and your sorting calls into one block of text, and paste that text into the Lab 1 submission in D2L before you leave class. Your answers stay on this page and are not sent anywhere until you paste them.