White-collar crime and first-time adult-onset offending: Explorations in the concept of negative life events as turning points

Social Bonds and White-Collar Crime: A Two-Study Assessment of Informal Social Controls in White-Collar Offenders

“…a lack of effective social controls is likely to promote processes resulting in deviance and anomie." Supporting this notion are several studies that show that a deterioration in social bonds may lead to unethical behavior at the workplace (Sims 2002), to workplace deviance (Hollinger 1986;Hollinger and Clark 1982), and to criminal white-collar behavior (Engdahl 2011(Engdahl , 2015Lasley 1988; but see Makkai and Braithwaite 1991).…”

“…Developments in adulthood can weaken, disrupt, or fracture social bonds in those with an unproblematic start in life (Sampson and Laub 2005:167; see also Hirschi 1969:19). For example, life events, such as a divorce (Farrington and West 1995) or a business crisis or financial problem (Engdahl 2011(Engdahl , 2015 may weaken the former strong bonds to society. Alternatively, white-collar crime researchers have stressed the role that criminogenic socialization processes within organization may play in: "the weakening of people's allegiance to social standards" (Passas 1990:166;see also Punch 1996:239).…”

“…The central notions from social control theory (Durkheim 1951;Hirschi 1969;Sampson and Laub 1993) clearly resound in his account: weakened bonds to important others in his social life (wife and community) and his economic life (associates and colleagues) made him more susceptibility to business temptations and more prone to take advantage of the criminogenic opportunities that were open to him in his executive position, leading him eventually to drift away from moral order. In line with such anecdotal evidence, scholars from the field of white-collar criminology have repeatedly argued that a deterioration in social bonds can explain why adult individuals become involved in fraud, embezzlement, or corruption, while others in similar positions refrain from doing so (see Braithwaite 1989;Engdahl 2011Engdahl , 2015Lasley 1988).…”

“…Despite the theory's comprehensive framework, the association between informal social controls and white-collar crime is still poorly understood and highly debated among white-collar crime scholars (e.g., Benson 2016:267;Friedrich 2010:212). A few studies have provided tentative evidence for weak social bonds in white-collar offenders, but were either not explicitly aimed at conceptualizing or examining Sampson and Laub's theory (e.g., Menard and Morris 2012;Piquero, Piquero, and Weisburd 2016) or were limited in terms of generalizability (e.g., Engdahl 2011Engdahl , 2015Hunter 2015). With systematic research lacking, key notions from the theory remain underexplored theoretically and unexamined empirically, and it is unclear whether and to what extent white-collar offenders are characterized by weak bonds to society.…”

“…In doing so, the study shows that a reduced bond to conventional society is not just a risk factor for crime in the streets (Sampson and Laub 1993; see also Eggleston and Laub 2002;Kempf 1993;Lilly, Cullen, and Ball 2014), but also for crimes in the suites (in reference to Bonger 1916;see Braithwaite 1989;Piquero, Piquero, and Weisburd 2016;Engdahl 2011Engdahl , 2015.…”