Stage model for female criminals: business school students’ perceptions of white-collar offenders

ABSTRACT

We know that half of the population in Norway is female, and we know that females represent 6% of the white-collar crime prison population. In the stage model overview, we derive percentages from the literature into the gender model to explain stepwise reduction from 50% to 6%. In our empirical research, we asked two groups of business school students to come up with their own estimates for the stages in the model for female criminals. While estimates from executive students resulted in 3% women in prison, bachelor students’ estimates resulted in 10% women in prison. The most obvious discrepancy between the research literature and our two survey groups is related to relative convictions. Based on the literature, we suggested that female defendants receive more serious convictions because they may perceive and feel more guilt for a crime, for example in terms of regret, shame and depression. Thus women may have a tendency to confess more easily. Both executive students and bachelor students disagree with this estimate of 140%, as they suggest 62% and 69% respectively. One reason for their suggestion of less serious convictions for female white-collar criminals – sometimes labelled pink-collar criminals – might be that family situation and other elements are taken into account before a verdict is passed on a woman. Another substantial discrepancy is related to detection risk. The literature suggests a low detection risk for women, but may be not as low as we estimated at 30%. Both executive and bachelor students believe that the gender difference in detection likelihood is not that formidable, as they suggest 75% and 65% respectively.

KEYWORDS:

• White-collar crime
• stage model
• survey research
• gender differences
• detection risk

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Petter Gottschalk

Petter Gottschalk is professor in the department of leadership and organizational behaviour at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo Norway. After completing his education at Technische Universität Berlin, Dartmouth College, MIT, and Henley Management College, he took on executive positions in technology enterprises for 20 years before joining academics. Dr Gottschalk has published extensively on knowledge management, intelligence strategy, police investigations, white-collar crime and fraud examinations. He lectured at Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice, University of New Haven in 2015 and at the Department of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati in 2018.