I came across a very interesting study looking at the correlation between victimization and reporting. On my past blogs I have focused on newspaper articles regarding white collar crime but I thought this was a very interesting study. The title of the article is, Studying the correlates of fraud victimization and reporting, written by Andrea Schoeper and Nicole Leeper Piquero. I am sure that white collar crime often goes unreported because it is not always huge multi-million dollar cases like that of Bernie Madoff. A lot of the cases will important the lives of the middle class and put them in a deep hole that will be very tough to get out of. This study tries to find out what some predictors are of white collar crime victimization. Because little is known about this subject, I mean is it even possible to have a list of traits for someone that might become a possible victim? I will go over quickly some of the results of the study in regards to people who are most likely to become victims and who most likely to report these crimes. The study came to the findings that people who engage in risky behaviors are more likely to become victims of fraud.The only other significant variable that could lead to victimization was age and the younger the person is the more likely they were to be victimized. This makes sense to me because the younger the person the less experienced they are in money matters and things that may be too good to be true may really entice them and lead to problems. Of course people who are on the risk taking side may get caught up in fraud by giving money to someone in the understanding they will double or triple it in a short period of time, usually risk takers are gamblers and putting money in the stock market is a type of gambling. The study goes into more detail about individual types of fraud.
The results of who is more likely to report these crimes were very interesting. Persons who had some type of college education were the most likely to report crimes of fraud or theft. In a less significant finding individuals who partook in risk taking behavior and were male were slightly more likely to report these crimes. Overall from the study people reported fraud 43% of the time. This seems like a pretty high number, but if you lost a good sum of money I am sure you would report it even though the chances of seeing that money again are slim. This article was very interesting and I will put the link below for whoever would like to look at it.
Source: Journal of Criminal Justice
No comments:
Post a Comment