摘要: In a 1940 article that has become a seminal work in criminology, Edwin Sutherland emphasises the mutual benefits that could result if economists and criminologists combined their knowledge. He could undoubtedly have also included historians in this intellectual alliance–an alliance destined to create a criminological theory that was less subservient to the popular stereotypes that tended to simplify the reasons for crime and the means of prevention. Although Sutherland’s call for interdisciplinarity focused primarily on white-collar crime, other types of crime also lend themselves particularly well to such an approach, foremost of which is so-called ‘identity theft’. While identity theft is frequently referred to as the fastest growing crime in recent years (Finklea, 2009), its criminological treatment remains very superficial: first, because the appropriateness of the terminology employed is far from being mutually agreed upon, which explains why it is preferable to put the term between quotation marks in a scientific article even if such an approach makes the writing style heavier; second, surveys on victimisation that seek to measure the extent of the problem are usually commissioned by the providers of security products or services whose business interests inevitably bias the methodologies and analysis. And last, since the repressive activity of governments is reduced to its simplest expression in this field, the traditional source of information for criminologists (individuals institutionalised in correctional facilities) is almost entirely absent, thus limiting the number of research studies on the perpetrators of this type of fraud and their methods.The dearth of …