NCJ Number
206819
Journal
Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Dated: 2004 Pages: 23-32
Date Published
2004
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This study explored employee offenders using corporate crime data (CCD) files.
Abstract
Previous research on crime against organizations by their employees has seldom employed the use of actual employee offender data and has overwhelming relied on the opinions and attitudes of the workforce instead. The current study used corporate files on employee offenders, CCD information, in order to assess the data’s ecological validity as a source of information on employee offending and to explore the profile of a typical employee offender. Content analysis was performed on 103 CCD files from a parcel delivery company in the United Kingdom, “Deliverance.” Variables under consideration included age, marital status, presence of children, length of employment, previous convictions, confession, other counterproductive behavior, and financial difficulty. The results revealed that the use of CCD has important advantages and disadvantages; the ecological validity of the CCD information can be impacted by a lack of critical information. The CCD information analyzed for the current study did not represent a full picture of the offense and the perpetrator. However, valuable business intelligence can be gleaned from the careful analysis of CCD information in terms of producing a profile of the typical employee offender. In the current study, these employee offenders tended to be male, in their 20’s, and of low tenure. Two types of employee offenders stood out: “troublemakers” and those with “nothing to lose.” In terms of theft prevention strategies, Deliverance would do well to target resources at their short-tenured, temporary, younger staff. It is important that organizations continue to improve on the amount and type of information gathered about employee-related crime in order to better inform prevention and detection strategies. Figure, notes, references