Revisiting the Guilty Mind

Abstract

Since Sutherland first addressed the topic, it has been well known that white-collar offenders do not regard themselves or their actions as criminal. Almost without exception white-collar offenders deny that they had a guilty mind when committing their offenses. Indeed, a distinguishing feature of the psychological makeup of white-collar offenders is thought to be their ability to neutralize the moral bind of the law and rationalize their criminal behavior. Although white-collar offenders are assumed to be different than other types of offenders in how they think about their crimes, no research has compared white-collar to other offenders on this matter. The current study fills this gap in the literature by comparing a sample of federal prison inmates convicted of white-collar offenses with a sample convicted of other types of offenses. Findings indicate that white-collar offenders may not have different thinking patterns as previously thought.