This latter element was dropped when the fourth edition was published in 1947. The theory also had a structural element positing that conflict and social disorganisation are the underlying causes of crime because they the patterns of people associated with. He was the author of the leading text Criminology, published in 1924, first stating the principle of differential association in the third edition retitled Principles of Criminology (1939:4–8) that the development of habitual patterns of criminality arise from association with those who commit crime rather than with those who do not commit crime. (They were successful, and had all references to the names of litigating corporations removed from the text.) When Yale University Press issued the unexpurgated version in 1983, the introduction by Gilbert Geis noted that Sutherland's concept of white-collar crime 'altered the study of crime throughout the world in fundamental ways'. If he had not already become prominent within the sociological profession prior to his introduction of the concept of white-collar crime in 1939, one can only speculate whether the seminal concept would have been published, as America's largest corporations threatened to sue the publishers of White Collar Crime.

Sutherland was elected president of the American Sociological Society in 1939, and president of the Sociological Research Association in 1940. It remained censored until the original text was published in 1983 by Yale University Press. He founded the Bloomington School of Criminology at Indiana University.ĭuring his time at Indiana, he published four books, including Twenty Thousand Homeless Men (1936), The Professional Thief (1937), the third edition of Principles of Criminology (1939), and the censored first edition of White Collar Crime (1949), his masterpiece. In 1935 he took a position at Indiana University, where he remained till his untimely death on October 11, 1950. In 1930, Sutherland accepted a position as a research professor at the University of Chicago. Also, during 1929–1930 Sutherland worked as a researcher with the Bureau of Social Hygiene in New York City. For several months in 1929 Sutherland studied the British penal system while in England. During this period, he concentrated in sociology as a scientific enterprise whose goal was to understand and control social problems. Sutherland solidified his reputation as one of the country's leading criminologists at the University of Minnesota, where he worked from 1926 to 1929. Sutherland's historical importance rests upon his having introduced (in a 27 December 1939 speech to the American Sociological Association, titled The White Collar Criminal) the concept of white-collar crime, a concept which violated existing prejudices that aristocrats can do no wrong (which was famously expressed in the ancient legal view that a king could do no wrong).Īfter receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago, Sutherland was at William Jewell College, Missouri (1913–1919), the University of Kansas (the summer of 1918), University of Illinois (1919–1925), Sutherland spent a summer at Northwestern (June–August 1922) prior to arriving at the University of Minnesota in 1925.

In 1939 Edwin was the first who introduced White Collar Crime. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1913. He was a sociologist of the symbolic interactionist school of thought and is best known for defining white-collar crime and differential association, a general theory of crime and delinquency. He is considered one of the most influential criminologists of the 20th century. Edwin Hardin Sutherland (Aug– October 11, 1950) was an American sociologist.

Edwin sutherland criminology