The benefit of longitudinal studies for understanding corporate criminal careers and the life course

• In Event: Roundtable: The Criminology of Regulation

Abstract

Criminological inquiry places great value on longitudinal empirical studies, but such research is relatively rare in the white-collar and corporate crime area. This is unfortunate as longitudinal and panel designs offer many strengths compared with one-off studies. They allow for the examination of dynamic and, depending on the design, causal processes including developmental progressions, patterns of behavior and trends over time, and relationships among key variables of interest. Longitudinal data present multiple opportunities for theory testing and evaluating the impact of prevention and control interventions. Panel designs, which follow the same subjects over time, consider both within and between subject change over time. The power of longitudinal analysis to predict and explain corporate crime could be unprecedented. To demonstrate the utility and benefit of longitudinal corporate crime data, we have garnered an exhaustive list of longitudinal (some panel) corporate crime studies from Europe and the United States (N ~19). Using a life-course/organizational life cycle lens to examine corporate criminal careers, we investigate the various dimensions of the criminal careers of the corporations from the different studies, including such things as offending frequency, severity, duration, and desistance. We also examine type of and variety of crime committed. We show in this study, among other things, that regulatory enforcement agencies collect useful data which offers significant insights into understanding corporate responses to enforcement activities. We describe the themes and patterns across our data sources; what has been collected (industries, variables, methods for example) and found, and what remains unexamined. We end with potential areas for theoretical advances and an agenda for future research.

Authors

• Marieke Kluin, Leiden University

• Natalie Schell-Busey, Rowan University

• Sally Simpson, University of Maryland

• Jordan Pierce, University of Maryland, College Park