The Itching Palm: The Crimes of Bribery and Extortion

Abstract

Two days before Christinas in 1939, while the United States was deeply immersed in a wrenching decade-long depression, the city of Philadelphia hosted a joint meeting of the American Sociological Society and the American Economic Association. The presidential address to the Society was delivered by Edwin H. Sutherland, a 56-year-old professor from Indiana University. His topic, “White Collar Criminality,” would in time significantly affect the way in which the study of crime would be conducted throughout the world. Sutherland began his talk by noting that economists, while well acquainted with the methods of business, rarely looked at these methods in tenns of crime, while sociologists, though sometimes students of crime, rarely considered it as an ingredient of business. Sutherland disingenuously, in keeping with the scientific ethos of the time, maintained that his only interest was to shore up theoretical understanding, but his clearly was a muckraking attack on the law-breaking activities of persons in the business world and in politics. “White-collar criminality is found in every occupation,” he proclaimed, “as can be discovered readily in casual conversation with a representative of an occupation by asking him, ’What crooked practices are found in your occupation?’”1