Disparities in Punishment of White- and Blue-Collar Crimes in Austria

Employing Hierarchical Cluster Analysis on data from the Austrian Conviction Statistics we use the severity of sanctioning to build three sets of crimes, one of which is predominantly associated with blue-collar crimes and the other two represent different forms of white-collar criminality. Our measurement instrument for severity of sanctioning is the relative usage of unconditional prison sentences and unconditional monetary fines. With those instruments we can obtain a picture of how directly punishments are felt by the delinquents. Analyzing the typical penalty structure for the three groups we find that white-collar crimes are punished significantly different and, in general, more mildly than blue-collar crimes. Within one group there is only very few unconditional sanctioning of any type at all, leaving this group very mildly punished. Then, within the group including Tax Fraud nearly no prison terms but an extremely high level of unconditional monetary fines can be found. Compare available sociodemographic data regarding the convicted persons to find that gender and nationality are not responsible for the differences between the groups. A probable explanation for the disparities can be seen in the relative incidence of repeat offenders. In a subset excluding repeat offenders the differences with regard to unconditional prison terms vanish but the other differences still remain. So, the need for higher deterrence explains only a part of the disparities of punishment between white- and blue-collar crimes