Organizational Crime: Two Models of Criminogenesis

Sociological interest in the “criminogenic” features of organizational structure has tended to focus on crime-coercive corporate systems that compel their members to commit illegal acts as the price of successful system membership. Our purpose is to alert researchers to another variety of organizational criminogenesis, not equally likely to be noticed and studied: the crime-facilitative system. In this second model of criminogenesis, system members are not forced to break the law, but rather are presented with extremely tempting structural conditions—high incentives and opportunities coupled with low risks—that encourage and facilitate crime, both by system members and by outsiders who seek to enter or use the system for criminal purposes. Using the securities industry as an illustration, we review some elements we feel may be characteristic of crime-facilitative systems, and suggest some directions for further investigation. To yield a coherent and testable theory of organizational crime, research in this area now needs to move beyond simple identification of corporate criminogenesis, and on to specification of the conditions under which various types of criminogenesis are likely to occur.