The Origin of White Collar Criminality? – Exploring a Gene x Environment Interaction Hypothesis

Abstract

Abstract:The aim for this article is the elementary question: why does white collar criminals become white collar criminals? The answer is a hypothetical syllogistic constructed hypothesis for further empirical exploration in the agenda. The hypothesis takes its point of departure in biosocial criminology, especially the gene-environment interplay, focused on white collar criminality. The hypothesis proposes a link between criminal attitudes and criminal behavior based on how biological (e.g. intergenerational heredity, MAO-A), neurological (e.g. executive functioning, cortical thickness) and social-psychological/sociological factors (e.g. peer-group, rationalizations, social stress, loss of class status) correlates to each other as a system of mechanisms.Keywords: White collar crime, biosocial criminology, mechanisms, formal logic.Human behavior is mediated by a set of biological factors (basically genetics) and a set of environmental factors (basically social relations). On an aggregated scale the two sets explains around 50 per cent each of criminal behavior (Tuvblad, 2014). These two sets are integrated into a complex set of interactions in the central nervous system (brain), the peripheral nervous system (control of movements and autonomic internal functions), and the endocrine system (organs responsible for hormone secretion). These complex set of interactions has continuously over the past decades been acknowledged among criminologists as a point of departure to understand the nature of crime. A topic which concern especially the explanation of interpersonal variation of criminal behavior in a random population (Rebellon, Barnes & Agnew, 2014).In this article I follow up a track which I already have outlined (Alalehto, 2015), mainly focused on psychopathic and sociopathic white collar criminals. In this article I focus more on the average white collar criminal, known as crises responders (Piquero & Weisburd, 2009;Morris & Sayed, 2013), or low-rate or medium-rate white collar criminals (Soothill, Humphreys, & Francis, 2012) or conformists, pragmatists and partly intolerants (Alalehto & Larsson, 2015) involving approximately 60 to 80 per cent of the white collar criminal population. The purpose is to give a theoretical explanation of why white collar criminals become white collar criminals? The answer will be given in a main hypothesis directed to be testable for empirical research.*Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Sociology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Tel: 46907865430; Fax: 46907866694; E-mail: tage.alalehto@umu.seWhat is the origin of the white collar criminal? A standard explanation among sociologist, given already by Edwin Sutherland (1940) is the position of power. Even among biosocial inspired criminologist this is a given structure of explanation. For example, Wiebe (2012), points out a classic Machiavellian thesis in his competitive advantage model: if you are powerful enough then you can get away with anything. It's based on the assumption that a certain kind of sociop...