Criminal behavior: factors and theoretical perspectives

Criminal Behavior

Ethical Principle in the American Psychological Association's Code of Conduct

Under the American Psychological Association's "Ethical Principles of Psychologists" and "Code of Conduct," Standard 1 involves "Resolving Ethical Issues"; section 1.05 of Standard 1 is "Reporting Ethical Violations" (APA). There is value within this section in terms of conducting research in criminal behavior because when an ethical violation occurs, one which could "substantially harm a person or organization" or is not resolved properly, it needs to be reported. Researching criminal behavior without evidence (which in this case is provided by a whistleblower) is likely to fail in its purpose. In the case of the APA it could be a violation of ethics that needs to be reported to the appropriate institutional authorities; in the case of a company employee who is aware of illegal behaviors, he needs to report those illegal behaviors. In fact not reporting obvious violations of appropriate law is in itself an ethical violation.

The example in this case involves a whistleblower -- a person who sees wrongdoing within his or her company and feels compelled to report those violations of law to authorities outside the organization of which he is part -- who worked for a restaurant company called Buca. The company's assistant comptroller resigned in 2001, according to an article in the peer-reviewed journal Strategic Finance, because he was offended at being part of a company that filed "false expense reports," that conducted improper transactions and manipulated earnings reports (Mihajlov, et al., 2012).

And in 2002 another employee, the cash manager for Buca, resigned and filed a letter with the Department of Labor for protection under the "…whistleblower provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act"; the fired cash manager claimed he was let go for reporting accounting irregularities to his supervisors. In 2004, the Securities & Exchange Commission (S&EC) began an investigation into the alleged irregularities at Buca; and in 2006 the S&EC filed criminal charges against Buca. What had happened is the executives at Buca went about "…overriding internal controls" and basically ripping off millions of dollars in earnings. The whistleblower's report brought the corrupt practices of Buca to an end; in psychological situations a whistleblower would need to take care that he or she doesn't violate confidentiality rights, but applying the APA's 1.05 under Resolving Ethical Issues in corporate situations is apt.

One Research Standard in the "Introduction to the Responsible Conduct of Research"

The one research standard that stands out as among the most important standards is "accuracy," which, along with "honesty, efficiency and objective" make up the four most fundamental standards from the Office of Research Integrity. In the peer-reviewed journal Criminology, professor John Laub writes that "…facts must come first" when reviewing various approaches to criminology. The point of Laub's essay -- which basically takes Edwin Sutherland to task for Sutherland's analysis of criminology and crime research -- is that Sutherland "…rejected key facts about crime that were contrary to his sociological paradigm" (Laub, 2006, p. 239). In other words, Sutherland took a sociological view of crime and ignored those facts that were not convenient to his theory. That is as troubling as a detective ignoring facts in a murder case because they detracted from the suspect the detective thought was guilty. Ignoring facts is one way of being inaccurate in any criminal investigation. It goes against the research standards that the ORI has put forward. Sutherland ignored facts that had to do with: a) the early "onset of offending"; b) the decline in "offending with age"; c) the "stability of crime and deviance over life course"; and d) the role of "individual differences in crime causation" (Laub, 239).