| Abstrakt: |
This paper reports the results from a survey that investigated the effectiveness of measures of criminal versatility and self-control in explaining a type of economic crime, insurance fraud, committed by exaggerating a legitimate claim. The study tests the robustness of Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) self-control theory, developed largely from studies of juvenile delinquency, by examining its efficacy in explaining insurance fraud, a nonviolent offense typically committed by adults. By comparing admitted insurance fraud offenders with non-offenders a variety of potential differences were examined. Our findings refute the perception that insurance fraud is a crime committed mostly by "ordinary" and presumably otherwise respectable citizens. Although the perpetrators of insurance fraud were indistinguishable from the remainder of the sample on a number of demographic and psychological dimensions such as marital status and interpersonal affect, they expressed relatively strong preferences for risky behaviors and were far more likely to have been involved in imprudent activities analogous to crime such as gambling, driver's license suspension, and tax evasion. Consistent with self-control theory, identifying persons with a history of reckless activities provides a means of separating many defrauders from their law-abiding peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
