White-collar crime: a neglected area in forensic psychiatry?

Abstract

White-collar crime (WCC) causes considerable societal harm, the economic and psychosocial costs of which exceed those of conventional crime. Despite the impact, it has received scant attention from the academic literature in forensic psychiatry. This narrative literature review covers important topics in our understanding of white-collar crime, including offender characteristics such as demographics, criminal history, mental illness, personality and psychopathy, the link with violent offending and the trajectory of the white-collar offender (WCO) through the criminal justice system. White-collar crime is under-researched, particularly with regards to psychopathology, and the field of forensic psychiatry may have important contributions to make to our understanding of this important and harmful type of crime.

Key words:

• economic crime
• forensic psychiatry
• mental health
• occupational crime
• personality narrative review
• white-collar crime

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Rose Clarkson has declared no conflicts of interest

Rajan Darjee has declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by the authors.