The article touches upon the problem of white-collar criminality and presents a contemporary view of the phenomenon.

The concept of white-collar crime, first introduced by Edwin H. Sutherland in 1939, immediately became the driving force behind the discussion undertaken by criminologists and sociologists of that time. Since then, many studies have been conducted in order to answer the question about who actually is a “white collar”– why do respectable, well-situated individuals decide to enter the path of crime? It is significant that the crime of white collars has never really been systematized in the Polish legal system (and most of European legal systems), in contrast to economic types of crime.