| Based on published sources and current research in financial services the author wishes to focus on the pathways into crime, the motives and the rationalizations of white-collar criminals. Using primary sources and published interviews with white-collar criminals, the paper will investigate the context for crime (opportunity structures), the moral career of the offender ( the socio-psychological path into deviance), the mechanisms involved in camouflaging the deviance, and the vocabularies of motive that they give on exposure. He will construct a typology of white-collar criminals to capture the range of paths into crime involved; some do it ostensibly for the company, others seem to revel in dirty work, some speak almost in terms of addiction regarding risk and "kicks" ( echoing the rhetoric of violent criminals), and others employ the metaphor of a "slippery slope". The analytical insights can be applied to published cases - Leeson and Barings Bank, the A.I.B. in Baltimore, and Anderson/Enron - as well as to cases from the author`s research. This paper contributes to examining the variety of trajectories by which white-collar criminals enter crime as well as eliciting the diversity of their motivations and expressed rationalizations. |
Updated 05/20/2006