“Learning the Good With the Bad”

Abstract

Occupational white-collar offenders are individuals who commit their offenses while in a position of trust and fiduciary responsibility within the respective company. Much has been written about their motivations and actual offenses; however, minimal empirical progress has been made determining whether the presence of an actual learning process exists that may inspire, encourage, or entice an individual to commit such crimes. Moreover, the research narrows further when attempting to determine whether a set of linguistic phrases that allows individuals to justify their crimes prior to commission may also be learned. Thus, the aim of this project was to understand the learning process behind occupational offenses, more specifically, do those we associate with provide neutralizations that may allow us to commit an occupational crime? To answer this question, 40 federally incarcerated occupational white-collar offenders were queried using semistructured one-on-one interviews. The results indicate that there is some empirical support for the notion that neutralizing language may in fact be learned from certain groups that we interact with both on and off the job. These findings suggest that further empirical investigation is warranted.