Middle-Class Offenders as Employees—Assessing the Risk: A 35-Year Follow-Up

Abstract

A 35-year follow-up of a series of 317 middle-class offenders in England and Wales suggests that the dangers of employing offenders may be more limited than expected. Although 40% were subsequently convicted, only 8% were subsequently convicted of offenses that directly and adversely affected an employer. This work should challenge the “exaggerated fears” of employers. Interestingly, variables which normally predict subsequent criminal activity made no impact in trying to predict offenses against an employer.

KEYWORDS:

• criminal careers
• embezzlement
• employee theft
• white-collar crime

Acknowledgments

Funding for this project was provided by the UK Economic and Social Research Council under the National Centre for Research Methods Initiative (RES-576-25-0019).

Notes

^a The total is greater than the number of offenders as some offenders had more than one conviction for an OAE during the follow-up.

Note. χ² = 0.5 on 1 df, p = .48.

Note. χ² = 1.0 on 4 df, p = .91.

Note. χ² = 0.87 on 2 df, p = .65.

“Standard list” convictions include all offenses triable at Crown Court and also the more serious offenses that are triable at magistrates' courts only or in either court system (Home Office, 1998).

Previous work on this data source (Soothill, 1981; Soothill & Holmes, 1981; Soothill et al., 1997, 1999) has tended to describe the series as white-collar offenders. However, this description is potentially misleading in relation to this series. In fact, when they were originally interviewed, there is evidence that only approaching one half of the series had convictions for offenses committed against an employer. The rest had committed a variety of other offenses, including murder and sexual offenses.

Jones (1965, p. 138), for instance, shows that only around one quarter (or 27.5%) found guilty of indictable crimes in England and Wales in 1962 were age 30 years or over.

The placing officers interviewed all the offenders to obtain a full CV. This statistic is taken from these CVs. The term “probably” introduces a cautionary note to cover the point that these offenders may have exaggerated their qualifications (the placing officers did not ask to see educational certificates, etc.).

The offense of embezzlement relates specifically to theft by employees of the Post Office or the Bank of England; this offense was replaced by Section 1 of the 1968 Theft Act. After 1968, employees of the Post Office or the Bank of England offenders found guilty of such offenses were convicted of stealing by an employee.

The chi-square test on this table produces a χ² value of 1.0 on 4 degrees of freedom, p = .91.

The chi-square test on this table produces a χ² value of .87 on 2 degrees of freedom, p = .65.