NCJ Number
73737
Journal
Security World Volume: 17 Issue: 10 Dated: (October 1980) Pages: 30,32,34,36
Date Published
1980
Length
4 pages
Annotation
In trying to understand employee theft, or any other crime, we need not look for psychological disorders or personal pathologies; we need only face two facts about the society in which we live.
Abstract
The first fact is that the world, the Nation, the marketplace, and even the family are not characterized by a single morality. The second fact is that learning to behave in terms of morality that could land you in jail is as easy as learning how to drive your car faster than 55 miles an hour. In addition, the verbalizations the potential criminal uses in conversations with himself or herself are the important elements in the process that gets the person into trouble, or keeps the person out of trouble. These legal or illegal behaviors are learned, chiefly, in intimate, personal groups. Such learning may include the idea that it is all right to steal because everybody else is doing it or the idea that the boss expects employees to steal. In addition, the ideology of individualism has encouraged each citizen to disregard social welfare in the interest of selfish satisfactions. Regulatory laws and even criminal statutes are then viewed as implementations of the desires of one's competitors, not as a codification of ethical principles.