Explaining Crime as Moral Actions

Wikström, Per‐Olof H.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-6896-8_12

Cited by 168 publications

(178 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(17 reference statements)

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“…These two views are rarely ever combined, although there is no shortage of scholarship in both social science and accounting literature that argues for the integration of these two approaches to advance understanding on the aetiology of crime (Barak, 1998;Cooper et al, 2013;Donegan & Gagon, 2008;Jeffrey, 1990;Morales et al, 2014). SAT is a newly developed theory that aims to unify individual and structural explanatory perspectives from criminology and social and behavioural sciences more generally to explain crime as moral action (Bouhana & Wikström, 2008Wikström & Treiber, 2009;Wikström, 2010aWikström, , 2010bWikström, , 2010cWikström et al, 2012).…”

Section: Situational Action Theory Of Crime Causation: a Brief Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theorizing Financial Crimes as Moral Actions

Lokanan

2017

European Accounting Review

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Abstract:The paper maintains that all acts of financial crimes can be explained within a general theory of moral action and analyzed as such. In this regard, the paper presents such a theorySituational Action Theory (SAT) -and argues that acts of financial crimes result from a perception-choice process involving rational deliberation and experimental habituation, themselves the outcomes of interactions between individuals and their environments. To examine this argument, the paper draws on two recent high profile fraud cases to critically discuss the extent to which these crimes should be meaningfully and innovatively analysed as moral actions and the moral context in which they occur. The findings indicate that the feature most relevant to a criminogenic is its moral context in relation to the opportunities and frictions that it generates. As such, environmental factors along with psychosocial processes of moral education become particularly important in the explanation of why certain moral contexts emerge in particular kinds of settings at a particular point in time. In this regard, SAT can be used as a powerful overarching framework to gain a more comprehensive understanding of peoples' choice processes to breach moral rules and devise effective crime prevention strategies to combat fraud.

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Section: Situational Action Theory Of Crime Causation: a Brief Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theorizing Financial Crimes as Moral Actions

Lokanan

2017

European Accounting Review

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“…But, there are recent efforts at multilevel theorizing (see Wikström, 2010). Qualitative work has also made great strides in this area (see Harding, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Examining gendered pathways in the causal chain linking neighborhood navigational strategies and unstructured socializing to adolescent violent offending

Zimmerman

2016

Journal of Criminal Justice

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“…There is a renewed interest in this concept in modern criminology as one aspect of conscience, under the umbrella concept "Belief in the conventional social order", which in turn is studied because it is strongly associated with a low crime rate on the individual level [23,[25][26][27], and possibly amenable to treatment. Obviously, psychopaths have little compassion for others by being callous and unemotional as well as narcissistically grandiose (cf item definitions of the PCL/R scale).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Scale of Evil-Interjudge Reliability and Associations with Predictor Variables

Levander¹

2018

FSAR

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Background: The concept of Evil has only rarely been the subject of empirical studies, which in turn requires a distinct definition of the concept, schemes for operationalization and development of measurement tools. The Scale of Evil (SoE) was constructed 1993 but has not yet been studied empirically. Aim:The main aim was to assess the reliability of the SoE. A second aim was to explore the correlation pattern between SoE and a range of other characteristics of perpetrators of crime. This might shed light on how Evil is construed in the minds of forensic professionals, and laymen.Method: 139 forensic psychiatric patients (stratified selection) were scored according to SoE by two independent raters. Psychopathy and HCR-15 (risk assessment) scores, as well as a data on a wide range of other individual characteristics were available for most of the subjects. Results:The interjudge reliability was very high with respect to rank order (tau=0.94) as well as distribution of scores (almost identical). Among more than 100 individual characteristics, one variable displayed a particularly strong association with SoE scores: Lack of Compassion (tau=0.49). As expected SoE correlated with PCL scores, but actually stronger with a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder, and item H1 (previous violence) and H8 (early behavioural problems) of the HCR-15. Significant associations were also obtained with many other variables, in line with expectations. Conclusion:SoE is a highly reliable scale. The pattern of associations with the other individual characteristics verifies the importance of psychopathic characteristics when scoring SoE, but SoE goes beyond being" another psychopathy scale". The Compassion variable, with its roots in criminological theory, appears to be a key to understand how raters construe Evil and rate SoE. The strong association qualifies as a construct validation of the SoE scale. (SoE). In addition to murder, the scale exemplifies scale steps with reference also to other crimes, for instance serial rapes. Stone constructed his scale on the basis of psychodynamic theory (particularly the concept of narcissism), psychopathy and his own clinical cases as well as case descriptions in mass media of persons known to have been exceptionally cruel to a partner, to children, or to other family members. KeywordsThe concept of excessive selfishness has been recognized throughout history, in ancient Greece labelled as "hubris". In 1911 Otto Rank published the first psychoanalytical paper regarding narcissism, linking it to vanity and self-admiration [13]. Kohut [14] and Kernberg [15] have contributed most to the current analytical understanding of narcissism, but from different points of departure. According to Kohut [14] the environment is the major cause of problems for such persons and there is no separate inborn and problematic aggressive drive. The "grandiose self" reflects the "fixation of an archaic but 'normal' primitive self" while for Kernberg [15] it is a pathological development of the aggre...

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Explaining Crime as Moral Actions

Cited by 168 publications

References 31 publications

Theorizing Financial Crimes as Moral Actions

Theorizing Financial Crimes as Moral Actions

Examining gendered pathways in the causal chain linking neighborhood navigational strategies and unstructured socializing to adolescent violent offending

The Scale of Evil-Interjudge Reliability and Associations with Predictor Variables

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