White Collar Criminals: The State of Knowledge

Abstract

White collar crime is the least studied and the least understood crime type in comparison to traditional crime types. This review highlights the recent developments in the state of knowledge over the white collar criminals. The review concerns the topics of demography, motivation for offending and career criminality among white collar criminals. It compiles the international results (mainly West-European) so far in the three topics. The review ends with a request on further research that needs to be done in four aspects: what is the main demographic difference between white collar offenders and confirmative non-offenders? How can we explain the difference in the age-crime relationship between street criminals and white collar criminals? Why do we still have the gender divergences by white collar criminals, despite the fact that women increase their participation into the labor market? And why do we know so little about the criminal motivation among white collar criminals?