White-collar and organized crimes: Questions of seriousness and policy

The line between organized crime and white-collar crime is often vague, compounding the separate social problems represented by these two types of criminality. This blurring is complicated further by the general assumption that organized criminals pose a more serious threat, thus requiring a stronger sanction than white-collar criminals. The controversy surrounding certain recent crime-control statutes centers around different assessments of the seriousness of both types of criminality. Prior studies of crime seriousness have focused primarily on crimes in general, with some attention to white-collar crime in contrast to ordinary crime. To date, however, no one has examined the differences in perceptions of seriousness between white-collar and organized crime. This paper investigates how occupation and attitudes toward the seriousness of white-collar and organized crime influence attitudes toward policy distinctions between the two, as well as toward the usefulness of various definitions of organized crime.