Sociodemographic and criminal career differences between persons convicted of economic and common crimes, and businessmen

Abstract

Comparación entre una muestra de delincuentes económicos, delincuentes comunes y empresarios en variables sociodemográficas, psicológicas y de carrera criminal.

White-collar criminals have a different profile in terms of socioeconomic features than common criminals. Many studies provide evidence that economic offenders have higher educational status, higher age and levels of professional skills, and fewer criminal records at a younger age than common offenders. Nevertheless, those findings have never been applied to the Spanish context where convictions for economic crimes have increased considerably during the last two decades. Nowadays, they represent 5% of the prison population. Therefore, the main purpose of the research is to verify if such differences are found in Spain. In other terms, to show differences in sociodemographic and criminal career profiles between three samples: economic offenders (N=350), common offenders (N=330), and businessmen (N=83). Results of the study provide useful information for prevention programs inside companies and for rehabilitations purposes to individualize treatment and activities in prison for that kind of offender.