Sutherland's Insight
In 1939, sociologist Edwin Sutherland coined the term 'white-collar crime' to describe offenses committed by people of high social status in the course of their occupations. He challenged the assumption that crime was primarily a lower-class phenomenon, documenting systematic law-breaking by major corporations. White-collar crime includes fraud, embezzlement, insider trading, environmental violations, price-fixing, and tax evasion. The 2008 financial crisis — triggered by predatory lending, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities, and regulatory capture — cost the global economy an estimated $22 trillion in lost output. Yet only one senior Wall Street banker went to prison. Sutherland's fundamental question endures: why are crimes of the powerful treated so differently?