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White-Collar, Blue-Collar and Collarless Crime: The Complicity of Victims in ‘Victimless Crime’

Exploring Criminal and Illegal Enterprise: New Perspectives on Research, Policy & Practice

ISBN: 978-1-78441-552-5, eISBN: 978-1-78441-551-8

Publication date: 22 May 2015

Abstract

Purpose

To explore the moral position of Baumol’s theory of productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship; Ross’s (1907) concept of the ‘criminaloid’ and Sutherland’s (1949a, 1949b) theories of white-collar crime, as applied to ‘popular illegalities’ (Lea, 2003) and the activities of entrepreneurs who operate primarily as small/medium enterprise (SME); artisans; and tradespeople as they interact with an emerging affluent working class.

Methodology/approach

Provides a framework of key texts that explore the concepts of morality, legality and ethics when applied to the theoretically unexplored concept of criminal entrepreneurism, as a function of working class survival and capital accumulation. Research for this chapter included the analysis of government reports into the illicit activities of ‘professional’ and ‘non-professional’ bodies; personal observation of street corner shops.

Findings

Provides a critical analysis of theories that advocate rule avoidance and evasion as an acceptable process of developing successful entrepreneurs and the controversial theories of white-collar crime that focus on ‘high status’ actors operating at the corporate level. It identifies a necessary relationship and complicity between clients (victims) and practitioners as key elements in the commission of deviant acts, as victims expand their social, economic and cultural capital.

Originality/value

By combining philosophies of entrepreneurism, theories of white, blue and collarless crime and a reconsideration of moral business principles, this chapter introduces a new construct of deviancy as a ‘positive’ outcome that reject the need for criminal justice agencies intervention.

Keywords

Citation

Fletcher, R. (2015), "White-Collar, Blue-Collar and Collarless Crime: The Complicity of Victims in ‘Victimless Crime’", Exploring Criminal and Illegal Enterprise: New Perspectives on Research, Policy & Practice (Contemporary Issues in Entrepreneurship Research, Vol. 5), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 75-95. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2040-724620150000005011

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited