Who was the white collar criminal? : white collar criminals in Sweden, 1865-1912

• Who was the white collar criminal? During the last few years this question has been an increasingly popular topic in the field of white collar crime. But very few have asked who the white collar criminal was in the past. Our aim is to investigate the demographic character of the white collar criminal during the first industrial revolution and the implementation of capitalism in Sweden (1865-1912). Data comes from Statistics Sweden‘s historical statistics record regarding a section of the law that concerns offenses in bankruptcy. The hypothesis put forward is that the impact of industrialism and capitalism changes the socio-demographic profile regarding offenders of bankruptcy. The results, however, indicate that the profile did not change, which implies that the impact of capitalism and industrialism during the first period in Sweden did not have any impact on the characteristics of the offenders. This is in line with recent research showing that there is no correlation between the number of bankruptcy offenses and industrialization during this period. Furthermore, the results show that there are great similarities in the socio-demographic profile during this period with the same profile today. This result clearly contradicts the common understanding among many researchers in the field that modern white collar crime has its roots in capitalism and industrialization. Rather, the result shows that the socio-demographic profile is stable and related to other factors. In the conclusion, we discuss the results from the point of view of general understandings of theories such as Wheeler‘s ―fear of falling, Gottfredson and Hirschi‘s self-control theory, and Hirschi‘s theory of social bonds.

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