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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue-collar crime | 1/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-collar_crime | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:21:42.392982+00:00 | kb-cron |
In criminology, blue-collar crime is any crime committed by an individual from a lower social class as opposed to white-collar crime which is associated with crime committed by someone of a higher-level social class. While blue-collar crime has no official legal classification, it holds to a general net group of crimes. These crimes are primarily small scale, for immediate beneficial gain to the individual or group involved in them. This can also include personal related crimes that can be driven by immediate reaction, such as during fights or confrontations. These crimes include but are not limited to: Narcotic production or distribution, sexual assault, theft, burglary, assault or murder.
== Etymology == Blue-collar crime is a term used to identify crime, normally of a small scale nature in contrast to “white-collar crime”. During the 1910s through to the 1920s in America, manual labourers often opted for blue shirts, so that stains gained from days at work were less visible. As during that time period and geographic location manual labour was often or almost exclusively assigned to the lower classes, the term was more permanently attributed to them as defining low income earners. This has carried on to the modern day, therefore meaning crime typically committed by lower classes. Blue-collar crime does not exclusively address low income earners in work, but also includes the unemployed who are also members of the lower classes.
== Causes == A dominant explanation for why people turn to crime is economic need and specifically unemployment. The unemployed are defined as persons above a specified age who, during the reference period, were without work, were currently available for work, and were seeking work -- according to The International Conference of Labour Statisticians. The process of industrialisation encouraged working-class incorporation into society with greater social mobility being achieved during the twentieth century. But the routine of policing tends to focus on the public places where the economically marginal live out more of their lives, so regulation falls on those who are not integrated into the mainstream institutions of economic and political life. A perennial source of conflict has therefore involved working-class youth but, as long-term structural unemployment emerged, an underclass was created. Ralf Dahrendorf argues that the majority class did not need the unemployed to maintain and even increase its standard of living, and so the condition of the underclass became hopeless. Box (1987) sums up the research into crime and unemployment at pp96–7: