The Gender Gap in White-Collar Crime: A Multi-Country Study of Women Offenders in Economic Crime
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The gender gap in white-collar crime perpetration is well-established, yet reasons for women's underrepresentation among this offending group remain disputed. Specifically , scholars debate whether women are socialized against offending or whether they simply lack the opportunity to engage in these types of crime. The current study focuses on the socialization perspective, looking beyond one's gender assigned at birth and instead looking at gender identity, threats to that identity, and the interaction of race and gender identity. Using an online, experimental vignette design depicting embezzlement, we find that gender identity influences the likelihood of crime perpetration even when one's opportunity to commit crime is held constant. Future directions for research and theoretical development into gender and white-collar crime are discussed following a presentation of the results.
Expressions about opportunities are used unproblematically in everyday contexts. Yet, the question “What is an opportunity?” has posed a difficult riddle in the academic study of entrepreneurship. Drawing on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, we explain that such perplexities are common when words are removed from ordinary language and intellectuals try to grasp what they name. Approaching the opportunity riddle differently, we ask, “How do entrepreneurs use the word opportunity?” and elucidate an actualization theory of entrepreneurship attuned to the everyday understandings that underlie the meaningful use of the word. Bringing implicit understandings to the foreground contributes to (1) the dissolution of the mystification over the nature of “opportunity”, (2) the clarification of the conceptual foundations of entrepreneurship theory, and (3) the reorientation of the field toward more conceptually precise ways of thinking about Knightian uncertainty, entrepreneurial success, and the entrepreneurial process. This paper also contributes to the methodology of management studies, by demonstrating how attention to the logic of ordinary language can alert us to theoretical dead-ends and enable the development of theory that bridges academic and everyday understandings.
This paper examines how and why employees used online computer access to commit fraud in New Zealand small businesses. Drawing on data from 18 court documents between 2006 and 2020, we use document analysis to examine the pressure, opportunity, rationalization, and capability elements using the fraud diamond framework. We provide three major findings. First, the employee frauds were motivated by vice and family circumstances. The combination of opportunity and capability had a devastating effect on the length of the fraud and the amount of financial loss. Second, the frauds were mostly perpetrated by middle-aged women in both managerial and nonmanagerial positions who displayed unusual behaviour but had no prior convictions. Third, small businesses are vulnerable to fraud in their billing, accounts payable, and payroll systems; thus, relevant prevention strategies are recommended. Overall, we conclude that the tendency for fraud is heightened in small businesses where trusted employees: have multiple responsibilities; have an occupational position that provides them with opportunity; are capable of manipulating online access; and have external pressures of addictions or adverse family circumstances. Our multiple cases approach facilitates a better understanding of the employee fraud contexts, including the motivation and the methods employed to commit such fraud in New Zealand.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to address the question that economic standards, norms and regulations can possess weak spots that might be exploitable for the embezzlement of an organization’s assets with resultant material consequences in money laundering,tax evasion, fraud, corruption and other potential financial crimes.
Design/methodology/approach
The author’s methodological approach is to introduce and discuss a new logical-deductive test that the author names “embezzler test”. The author’s test investigates regulatory architectures from the perspective of someone attempting to divert assets from or to an organization. It appraises whether a potential embezzler could divert resources without being detected and sanctioned.
Findings
The embezzler test can be applied to a broad range of standards, norms and regulations.
Research limitations/implications
This new test can be improved and further calibrated in future research.
Practical implications
Researchers, regulators and law makers can use the new test to identify and eventually fix weak spots for embezzlement in norms, standards and regulations.
Originality/value
To the best of the author’s knowledge, such a test has never been formulated or applied before to identify weak spots for potential embezzlement in regulatory architectures.
This article serves to introduce the Special Issue of Economic Anthropology dedicated to “Convenience as a Driver, Mediator, and Moderator of Social Economies.” The twelve articles in this issue are based on papers presented at the fortieth annual meeting of the Society for Economic Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame from April 30 to May 1, 2020. In this introductory article, I briefly introduce, conceptualize, and generally define “convenience” as a heuristic and part of doxa and as a powerful force driving social economies, freshly revealed in the fractures left by the global COVID‐19 pandemic. I then discuss the etymology of the term convenience and review previous research on the topic of convenience within marketing, technology, business, and the medical sectors, which reveal it to be a fluid, multidimensional concept centered on key concepts such as efficiency, efficacy, ease, comfort, and/or advantage, but also culturally circumscribed. The articles in this issue speak to the complexities of “convenience” with ethnographic cases from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Being one of the cornerstones of consumption driving contemporary global economies, “convenience” as a driver of economies has significant and even positive impacts for issues such as poverty alleviation. It also has, in this hyperscale global economic landscape, negative implications for human societies in its impacts on health and the environment. As such, I argue that convenience is a crucial topic for future anthropological concern.
Through a nine-month ethnography in an advertising agency in Iran, a deeply conservative society, we explore the microprocesses through which actors search for and exploit areas of institutional plasticity toward incremental change. Given the infeasibility of more significant change in a highly institutionalized arrangement, actors in these settings are likely to seek out institutions characterized by the highest degree of plasticity. Yet, extant institutional research has not yet addressed the question of how they may go about doing so, which is what we seek to do in this paper. By studying how celebrity endorsement became more normative in the field of advertising despite initial resistance from Iranian government regulators, we make four contributions to institutional literature. First, we demonstrate how institutional plasticity can serve as an antecedent to incremental institutional change in highly institutionalized contexts. Second, we trace the source of institutional plasticity to a misalignment between institutional pillars. Third, we identify the tactics and strategies that challengers use in the process of sensing institutional plasticity and stretching institutional boundaries. Finally, we shed light on the use of material and discursive resources across different stages of negotiations over incremental movements in the boundaries of normativity within a highly institutionalized setting.
Women empowerment is considered as the women decision-making power, easy access to information, and resource control. Women entrepreneurship is in the initial stage in Pakistan. The present study primarily focused on overcoming the challenge of women empowerment through entrepreneurship in Pakistan. A structured questionnaire is used to collect data through survey method. The target population of the study is 120 women of main cities of Pakistan. The target population has divided into two categories (Housewife/ Entrepreneur cum housewife). The results highlight that entrepreneurship played a significant role and increased the decision-making power of women entrepreneurs as compared to the housewife. However, women entrepreneurs are facing various obstacles such as less governmental support, complicated bank loan procedures, lack of entrepreneurial education, and market awareness. The governmental support in lieu of smooth and easily accessible bank loans for women requires for enhancing their confidence and control on resources like men. The result highlights that women entrepreneurs have strong decision-making power, fewer mobility issues, autonomy, financial independence, and empowered as compared to housewives. This study will help policymakers to formulate strategies to overcome the obstacles of women entrepreneurship to attain women empowerment through entrepreneurship. A Women empowerment model is proposed to be followed.
Situational Action Theory (SAT) postulates that personal crime propensity and the setting’s criminogenic features are direct causes of crime. This perspective also places a central focus on the moral factors involved. The moral norms of settings have not yet been exhaustively examined in regard to the aspects that may influence them. This theoretical article applies SAT to the particular case of settings including a group. Building upon previous literature on social cohesion in groups (such as team spirit/esprit de corps), the group present in the setting is presumably more likely to be identified by the individual if such group cohesiveness is high. When perceived, the moral norms of the group and deterrence should have an influence through becoming part of the setting in the causation of crime, according to SAT. This application suggests that SAT is a fruitful approach for explaining the impacts of groups on crime.
Over the past decade the study of white-collar crime has been undergoing a resurgence of interest, productivity, and creativity. New findings have emerged regarding the social, demographic and psychological characteristics of white-collar offenders. These findings have spurred theoretical advances in the application of standard criminological perspectives to white-collar crime, including opportunity, life course, and informal social control theory. Researchers have also made advances in understanding how white-collar offenders are treated by the justice system and how they respond to that treatment, and these advances have implications for the prevention and control of white-collar crime. In this presentation, I review these theoretical and empirical advances and suggest avenues for future research and policy on this important and harmful form of criminal behavior.
In order to understand the mechanisms that underlie involvement in white-collar crime on a personal level, 26 offenders convicted of a white-collar offence were interviewed. Building on theory and research from white-collar criminology, life-course criminology and moral psychology, findings show that a combination of criminogenic circumstances, weakened social bonds and adjusted moral ideas lead offenders down different pathways into white-collar offending. Although the process of crime involvement seems highly context-dependent in some instances, the interviews indicate that crime involvement is more commonly part of a long-running process, in which social bonds have weakened or moral ideas have been adjusted, which in turn influenced the decision to engage in the white-collar offence. Along with the limitations of the study and the directions for future research, the paper discusses the implications of the findings for white-collar crime research, in particular the complex role of morality in white-collar crime involvement.
We find support for the idea that gender affects target selection when committing white-collar crime. Based on the theory of convenience, we argue that male and female offenders vary in their perceptions of convenience when considering alternative categories of crime and alternative categories of victims. We obtained data from Utah’s White Collar Crime Offender Registry. Individuals in the state of Utah who are convicted of a second-degree white-collar crime felony or higher are required to register. The categories of crime included from statute HB 378 are securities fraud, theft by deception, unlawful dealing of property by fiduciary, fraudulent insurance, mortgage fraud, communications fraud, and money laundering.
The telecommunication company Telia’s dealings in Uzbekistan have resulted in bribery accusations both in Sweden and in abroad. The article analyzes the defense mechanisms produced by both the corporation and the prosecuted former executives of the company. Telia’s initially denial eventually changed into a partial acknowledgment in combination with a scapegoating discourse. While Telia hardly defended itself at all in the Swedish court, the company’s former executives employed a defense of legality, denial of knowledge, of deviance, and of responsibility as well as a claim of being scapegoated. We discuss these developments in the light of the transformation of the Telia case from a mediated corporate scandal to a criminal court case and from a focus on organizational to individual responsibility.
It would seem, on the surface, logical that entrepreneurs would treat stakeholders with honesty and respect. However, this is not always the case—at times, entrepreneurs lie to stakeholders in order to take a step closer to achieving legitimacy. It is these legitimacy lies that are the focus of the current work. Overall, while we know that legitimacy lies are told, we know very little about the psychological processes at work that may make it more likely for someone to tell a legitimacy lie. Thus, we theorize about the pressure to pursue legitimacy, the situational and individual factors that affect this pursuit, as well as how this context can lead to moral disengagement and the telling of legitimacy lies. Our theorizing advances the existing literature and provides a dynamic framework by which future research can delve more deeply into the nuanced context that breeds the escalation of legitimacy lies.
In recent years two Swedish companies, Telia and Lundin Petroleum, have had to work hard to legitimate their actions as a result of allegations of criminal activity. In this paper, the corporate framings employed to deal with allegations of crime will be analysed on the basis of Stanley Cohen's (2009) theoretical work on processes of denial and neutralization techniques. More specifically, the paper focuses on the temporalization of neutralizations of corporate crime and aims to answer the following questions: How have the corporations' defence mechanisms changed over time? How might the types of crime of which they have been accused, and their corporate structures, affect the ways in which particular defence mechanisms are employed? The analysis demonstrates that although there are similarities, such as both companies framing their businesses as contributing to the development of democracy, human rights, prosperity and peace, the companies follow two different lines of development in their defences. While Telia moves from literal denial to confession, Lundin Petroleum stays with its literal denial in parallel with a strong condemnation of the condemners. These differences seem to be grounded both in the crimes of which the companies have been accused and their respective corporate structures.
In this study, we explore how top executives affect the well-being of multiple stakeholders and long-run organizational outcomes. In the context of the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), we examine how CEO greed impacts firms’ stance toward corporate social responsibility (CSR) prior to the onset of the GFC and how this, in turn, shapes firms’ fate during and after the GFC. We argue that CEO greed will be negatively associated with CSR, because in their unbridled pursuit of personal wealth, greedy CEOs are more likely to exhibit myopic behaviors and neglect investment in CSR. We also adopt a person-pay interactionist logic to theorize that the willingness of greedy executives to invest in CSR will be especially sensitive to different types of pay instruments. Next, we build on recent findings from research on CSR that suggest that stakeholder engagement is a defining feature of resilient organizations. We expect that, due to low CSR investment, firms led by greedy CEOs will experience greater losses in the short run and will take longer time to recover from the 2008 GFC. For a sample of 301 CEOs of public U.S. organizations, we analyzed the stock prices and found general support for our hypotheses.
Women have been active in the labor market since World War II, though discrimination and gender stereotypes have kept women from having a significant presence in white‐collar jobs. This has limited their opportunities to commit various white‐collar crimes, until today. Women's presence in committing specific white‐collar crimes is notable, though little is still known about their inclusion or exclusion in white‐collar crimes.
White-collar crimes (WCC) or financial crimes (FC) are the crimes that are linked with the top-level management representatives who are responsible to make the right decisions for the better functioning of the organization, these individuals are highly respectable as they hold a position of high repute. However, when the same individuals either under the pressure of performance or personal issues misuse the power and control vested on them due to the position they hold in the organization, take certain decisions which lead the organization into jeopardy. These individuals not only put the hard-earned money of the investors on stake but also enjoy the best of the facilities on the basis of their position. In the said article the authors have tried to answer two major questions regarding the abuse of position and manipulation of the financial statements at the struggling phase of the firm. The base of the study is convenience theory which was used to understand the concept of convenience theory for which a questionnaire based on 7-point Likert scale was used in which responses of 230 MBA students were studied. The results were near to what were expected supporting the fact that individuals are misusing their position to commit WCC, supporting the concept of convenience theory being used in the study.
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.
Despite the importance and centrality of comparative criminological research, there are still substantial methodological impediments to its development. This chapter discusses the general framework used in the current study and issues related to comparative criminology and white-collar crime research. It reviews relevant literatures on the case study method in comparative research, and on comparative analyses of white-collar and corporate crime. The current parallel study of China and the United States, which have the largest economies in the world, elaborates on the perspective put forth by Zimring and Johnson on the comparative study of corruption as a special subcategory of white-collar crime. The chapter concludes by reviewing both theories and patterns of white-collar and corporate crimes found in studies in the East and the West, including those relating to endemic and costly financial debacles in China and the United States. The dynamics of non-issue making are discussed to provide a more robust model for understanding white-collar and corporate crime in cross-national perspective, including overcoming problems in searching out best practices for prevention. Even considering its much larger size, China’s reported problem of corruption and white-collar crime appears far greater than that of other developed nations.
Convenience exists in the financial motive, the organizational opportunity, and the personal willingness for deviant behavior. These three themes can result in 14 convenience propositions as presented in this article. In cases where an offender is detected, the offense can be examined by identifying relevant convenience issues in the structural model of crime convenience. Not all of the 14 issues will be relevant to create a narrative of one specific incident. In cases where prevention of offenses is the issue, then vulnerability review is appropriate for all 14 propositions. For example, domination of greed or extensive differential association can signal strong motivation or strong willingness for wrongdoing, while lack of oversight and guardianship can signal an invitation for wrongdoing.
Objectives
Test the role of individual and crime characteristics on public opinions of white-collar crime seriousness and support for crime reduction policy; consider the relationship between perceptions of crime seriousness and support for public policies to reduce white-collar crime.
Methods
Data from a nationally-representative survey. Respondents ( n = 2,050) rated ten white-collar crimes, relative to a street crime (burglary) and also indicated their relative support (i.e., willingness to pay) for 16 policies to reduce various types of white-collar crime. Models incorporate respondent-level random effects to account for multiple ratings per respondent.
Results
Crimes committed by organizations are perceived more seriously than those committed by individuals. Perceptions of a white-collar crime as more serious than burglary increase the likelihood of supporting prevention programs. Race and political party are related to both perceptions of crime seriousness and support for prevention policy.
Conclusions
There may be less consensus around perceptions of white-collar crime seriousness than for other crime types. Perceptions of crime seriousness are a function of both individual and crime characteristics that structure assessments of risk, harmfulness, and wrongfulness. Group differences may be related to differences in awareness of the scope, harms, and perceived victimization risk associated with particular crime types.
This article starts with a brief review of law firm business. Next, crime convenience theory is applied to the case by identifying relevant convenience themes for financial motive, organizational opportunity, and personal willingness. Then, a brief application of crime signal detection theory is presented. In the discussion, governance in the form of restrictions based on convenience theory is discussed. Prevention and detection of wrongdoing is at the core of governance to secure compliance with laws, regulations, rules, and guidelines. The lack of transparency among stakeholders in the case of the law firm is detrimental to governance. The discourse and rituals of transparency, account-giving, and verification are central to governance.
Following the rampant increase in Bitcoin prices, there has been a proliferation of cryptocurrencies, which have become a major way of doing business across national boundaries. This paper investigates the link between cryptocurrency markets and drug trafficking activities. More specifically, we explore the impact of the announcement of 24 major drug busts on the systematic risk and return of the world cryptocurrency market. We deploy an event study methodology to estimate the abnormal returns associated with drug trafficking activities in the cryptocurrency market. We find that the relationship between the two is quite strong in the case of some cryptocurrencies, albeit weaker in others. However, we show that drug bust news tends to create uncertainty, and accordingly impart risk into cryptocurrency markets. This study confirms the predictions of convenience theories of crime as to the relative attractiveness of cryptocurrencies to criminals, and the extent to which not only general, but also their own future interests, sacrificed readily on the altar of accessibility. We highlight how when social and regulatory foundations are weak, criminal behaviour may overwhelm virtual spaces, marginalizing more orthodox businesses, no matter how altruistic the intentions of their founders.
Recent developments in routine activities theory have sought to conceptualize the notion of capable guardianship, as well as to broaden the application of the theory to the corporate crime context. Building on this work with systematically collected qualitative data, we examine the mechanisms in which offenders commit corporate financial fraud and identify the failures in guardianship. In addition to the unique dimensions of corporate crime already identified (i.e., specialized access to targets), our work highlights the need to consider guardian–offender overlap, or instances in which those tasked with guardianship responsibilities become motivated offenders. Our findings suggest financial regulations focusing on adding layers of guardians may be insufficient. They also have broader implications for understanding guardian capability in other forms of crime—namely, the need to consider the costs and benefits of intervention, willingness and ability to intervene in differing contexts, and how these dimensions of guardianship shape offender risk perceptions.
Although previous research suggests that many dimensions of religion (e.g., religious service attendance, importance of religion) are significantly related to juvenile delinquency and substance use, fewer studies have examined the relationship between religiosity and adult crime, particularly white-collar crimes. Based on Wave 4 of the Baylor Religion Survey, we used Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression to determine if religiosity reduces occupational crime and deviance due to feelings of work as a vocational calling which we hypothesized would increase job satisfaction and affective commitment to work. We find that people who attend religious services more frequently are significantly less likely to engage In occupational crime and deviance, but importance of religion is not significantly related to occupational crime or deviance. Contrary to our expectations, vocational calling, job satisfaction, and affective commitment do not explain the relationship between religious service attendance and occupational crime and deviance. Our research suggests future research is warranted to better understand the relationship between religion and adult crime, particularly white-collar crime, and the possible mediating factors that may explain this relationship.
Purpose: Under the COVID 19 epidemic, public interest should be treated as a kind of public ethics. From the perspective of economic regulation, this study regards unethical behavior arising from the pursuit of convenience as a challenge against the public interest. It attempts to analyze the relationship between convenience and moral behavior from the perspectives of moral philosophy and psychology, reveal the factors influencing occurrence of unethical behavior of convenience, and express opinions on the construction of citizen morality under the epidemic. Method: By combining literature research and life cases, analysis is made on unethical behavior of convenience in life. Results: Convenience is a need in human moral life, and people may have unethical behaviors in the pursuit of convenience. The degree of convenience in the context of moral life, the clarity of moral clues, whether moral evasion is successful, and the tolerance of moral hazards are factors that affect whether individuals commit unethical behaviors in the pursuit of convenience. Conclusion: Respect for individual convenience is also respect for individual human rights, and overall convenience is the inherent requirement of social moral life. The epidemic has significantly impacted individual lives and public lifestyles. It is undoubtedly an important means to prevent and control the COVID-19 epidemic by regarding public interests as public ethics. For the need to jointly prevent and control the epidemic, it is recommended that schools incorporate convenience-related moral education content in light of the epidemic situation.
Based on a March 28–29, 2020 MTurk survey (N = 1,000), the current study examined how faith in President Donald Trump’s statements downplaying the risks and his responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic affected endorsement of social distancing techniques of neutralization. Controlling for a host of variables, the analysis revealed that faith in Trump’s denials was robustly associated with neutralization beliefs. Support for techniques of neutralization also was affected by, among other variables, low self-control and binding foundations, a construct drawn from Haidt’s Moral Foundation Theory. These results suggest that in the early stages of the pandemic, President Trump’s denials served as a likely source of cognitions justifying noncompliance with social distancing health norms. More generally, the data indicate that in his assumed role of the “Denier in Chief,” Trump may have been influential in prompting faithful followers to engage in conduct (e.g., be maskless, associate indoors) that exposed them to coronavirus infection as the pandemic unfolded throughout 2020.
Convenience theory is a novel, integrated theory aimed at explaining criminal behavior, with a particular focus on white-collar crime. The current study represents a preliminary test of this theory through a survey of student perceptions of financial crimes committed by business leaders and executives. Four dimensions of the theory, including justifications, motivations, opportunities, and willingness to commit crime, are examined using an international sample of students from two different universities. Results reveal significant differences between students’ agreement with justifications for white-collar crime. Those more likely to agree with crime justifications were also more likely to agree with motivations for and willingness to engage in executive leader crimes associated with a business. Thus, the current study finds support for convenience theory as a possible explanation for white-collar criminality among those expected to be in future positions which make these crimes possible. Findings also implicate motivation and willingness, two important dimensions in convenience theory, as key factors which are likely to influence the decision-making process to engage in white-collar crime.
Visual criminology has established itself as a site of criminological innovation. Its ascendance, though, highlights ways in which the ‘ocularcentrism’ of the social sciences is reproduced in criminology. We respond, arguing for attention to the totality of sensorial modalities. Outlining the possible contours of a criminology concerned with smell, taste, sound and touch—along with the visual—the paper describes moments in which the sensory intersects with various phenomena of crime, harm, justice and power. Noting the primacy of the sensorial in understanding environmental harm, we describe an explicitly sensory green criminology while also suggesting the ways that heightened criminological attention to the non-visual senses might uncover new sites and modes of knowledge and a more richly affective criminology.
Nearly all of the scholarship in the area of leader-follower relationships hinges on one construct: Leader-Member Exchange (LMX). Given the central role of this construct in leadership and organizational studies, it is critical that LMX be clearly understood and both measured and analyzed in a valid manner. This critique identifies systemic conceptual (e.g., unclear definition and unclear nomological net), measurement (e.g., measures that do not capture LMX's theoretical foundations and misalignment between conceptualization and measurement) and treatment (e.g., endogeneity) issues associated with the construct. Collectively, these issues lead us to conclude that the LMX construct is incapable of serving the needs of the theories it has traditionally served, and as currently constituted, is unlikely to advance leadership theory and practice in significant or meaningful ways. We conclude with recommendations for how scholars can move forward with the opportunity and challenge of replacing the LMX construct.
This study examines gender differences in white-collar offending in a sample of men and women on federal community supervision (probation and supervised release). Compared to studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s women’s participation in white collar crime has changed in some ways but also has striking similarities to those earlier studies. Study findings illustrate that men still comprise a larger share of those who commit white-collar offenses, but the proportion of women is growing. This study highlights other gendered differences in white-collar offending as relates to important demographic characteristics and community supervision. Some of the key differences found by gender concern educational attainment and marital status, which are similar to differences exhibited in prior research. The discussion sections outline the implications as well as compares these new findings to historical studies on gender and white-collar crime.
One possible explanation for the gender distribution of white-collar offending may be gender related differences in criminal thinking styles. This paper uses the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) to compare women and men convicted of white-collar type crimes on eight different thinking styles and three summary scales. The results showed that both women and men convicted of white-collar type crimes had low criminal thinking scores on the PICTS. On some styles, women scored higher than men, but the differences were small. Regression analyses found that after controlling for other factors gender predicted proactive, reactive, and general criminal thinking: on average women scored higher than men on all three scales. However, the results also showed that measures of risk and needs were stronger predictors of criminal thinking than gender. Recommendations for future research and policy to address gender similarities and differences among people convicted of white-collar type offenses are discussed.
The last couple of decades have seen a considerable increase in the number of studies that have examined the risk/need factors of individuals under correctional supervision and the validity of risk assessments that stemmed from RNR model. Empirical research has examined these factors with populations of different gender, ethnicity, and offense type. However, few articles to date have studied the risk/need factors of individuals that are under correctional supervision for engaging in white-collar crime. The current article discusses the empirical findings of the Benson & Harbinson (current issue), Goulette (current issue), and Ruhland & Selzer (current issue), three articles that have explored the risk/need factors of individuals involved in white-collar offenses, and gender differences in these same populations. Findings from the articles point out that individuals involved in white-collar crime display lower average risk scores than individuals engaging in common offenses. While the risk/need factors among white-collar and general offense populations appear similar, results show that individuals engaging in white-collar crime could exhibit risk/needs differently from general crime populations. Additionally, the findings from the current three articles do not seem to offer support for the gendered pathways to crime approach. The current article discusses how these empirical findings related to the RNR model of correctional supervision and offers directions for future research.
Reducing recidivism rates continues to be the focus of scholars and practitioners alike. While the risk-need-responsivity (RNR) principle model has guided correctional treatment services for nearly 40 years, some scholars argue that it does not necessarily pertain to special groups of people, more specifically women or people who commit white-collar offenses. The current study examines differences in risk scores for males and females who were convicted of federal white-collar crimes and who were placed on community supervision. Differences between males and females were noted, suggesting that gender-specific risk-needs assessment tools should be considered for women generally, and women sentenced for white-collar crime specifically.