Geis, Sutherland and white-collar crime

Source:  ACFE Fraud Magazine - Link ->Geis, Sutherland and white-collar crime

ROBERT F. MEIER, PH.D.

March/April 2013

DIANE LABOMBARBE/ISTOCKPHOTO

This article is excerpted and adapted from the 2001 book “Contemporary Issues in Crime & Criminal Justice: Essays in Honor of Gilbert Geis,” edited by Henry N. Pontell and David Shichor. This collection, published by Prentice Hall, was assembled in honor of Dr. Geis on his 75th birthday. We republish the article from the September/October 2001 issue of the ACFE’s The White Paper, the predecessor to Fraud Magazine, in honor of Dr. Geis who passed away Nov. 10, 2012. — ed.

Edwin Sutherland and Gilbert Geis share a strong mutual interest in white-collar crime. Both of these criminologists had made important contributions to the theory and research of white-collar crime at different times. My purpose here is to compare the contributions of these scholars to our understanding of white-collar crime. In so doing, I hope to elucidate the important contributions made by Gilbert Geis to this topic.

The thesis of this article can be stated simply: The promise in the pioneering work of Edwin Sutherland on white-collar crime has been fulfilled more in the works of Geis than in the works of any other scholar. That promise was vast, and there was much work to be done at the time of Sutherland’s death in 1950, in spite of his vigorous labor.

While Sutherland’s mark was strong (he coined the term “white-collar crime”), one could argue that he left the study of white-collar crime in disarray, without a definitional rudder and sufficient empirical work to power the field beyond his initial foray. While Sutherland staked the initial claim, Geis exploited it to the point where it became a major area of study and public policy.

We will see that early ventures into the study of white-collar crime immediately after Sutherland’s death were tentative and not especially helpful in refining and building the concept. It would be nearly two decades after Sutherland’s death that the area of white-collar crime would come into its own, and the principal reason for that were the contributions of Gilbert Geis.

This article examines both biography and intellectual approaches to discern the unique contributions of Sutherland and Geis in understanding white-collar crime.

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Geis, Sutherland and white-collar crime

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