Summer 2002: The Genesis of the Sentencing Provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

Convenience in White-Collar Crime: Introducing a Core Concept

“…Researchers introduce numerous suggestions to explain white-collar individuals such as Madoff, Rajaratman and Schilling. Along the behavioral dimension, we find strain theory (Langton and Piquero 2007), deterrence theory (Comey 2009;Holtfreter et al 2008), self-control theory (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990;Holtfreter et al 2010;Piquero et al 2010), obedience theory (Baird and Zelin 2009), fear of falling (Piquero 2012), negative life events (Engdahl 2015), slippery slope (Welsh et al 2014), and the American dream of economic success (Pratt and Cullen 2005;Schoepfer and Piquero 2006)just to name a few. These theories suggest motives for committing white-collar crime, and they make crime a convenient option according to the concept of convenience.…”

“…Crime prevention (the goal of deterrence) assumes that criminals or potential criminals will think carefully before committing a crime if the likelihood of detection and/or the fear of swift and severe punishment are present. According to Comey (2009), deterrence works best when punishment is swift and certain.…”

“…A privileged person may over time slide on a slippery slope from legal to illegal actions without really noticing or being conscious about it (Arjoon 2008;Welsh et al 2014). Punishment appears less likely and less deterrent because crime occurs in professional life in an organizational context (Benson and Simpson 2015;Comey 2009;Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990). Executives with an excessive desire to control others in the organization may be able to expand their own degrees of freedom by making controlled employees more passive (Piquero et al 2010).…”

“…Differential association theory (Sutherland 1983) Rational choice theory (Pratt and Cullen 2005) Self-control theory (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990) Strain theory (Langton and Piquero 2007) Deterrence theory (Comey 2009) Obedience theory (Baird and…”

Convenience Dynamics in White-Collar Crime: Financial Motive, Organizational Opportunity, and Deviant Behavior

“…The personal willingness for deviant behavior focuses on offender choice and perceived innocence. The choice of crime derives from deviant identity (Bernburg, Krohn, and Rivera 2006;Galvin, Lange, and Ashforth 2015;Mingus and Burchfield 2012;Obodaru 2017;Petrocelli, Piquero, and Smith 2003;Sampson and Laub 1993;Zvi and Elaad 2018), rational consideration (Benartzi, Beshears, Milkman, Sunstein, Thaler, Shankar, Tucker-Ray, Congdon, and Galing 2017;Comey, 2009;Craig and Piquero 2017;Mawritz, Greenbaum, Butts, and Graham 2017;Olafsen, Niemiec, Halvari, Deci, and Williams 2017;Pratt and Cullen 2005), or learning from others (Baird and Zelin 2009;Bussmann, Niemeczek, and Vockrodt 2018;Sutherland 1983). The perceived innocence at crime can be caused by justification (Engdahl 2015;Gamache and McNamara 2019;Gao and Zhang 2019;Nichol 2019;Schnatterly, Gangloff, and Tuschke 2018) and neutralization (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990;Sykes and Matza 1957;Welsh, Ordonez, Snyder, and Christian 2014).…”