Reading the Research

I'm under an unbelievable crunch this week. In just three short days, I need to turn in my thesis topic, even though I just started my grad program 1 1/2 wks ago. I'm on a bit of an accelerated plan in order to attempt official entry into the jc doctorate program through their applications due this winter. My feminist theory class has me doing my thesis proposal as my paper for her course this semester. Nothing like taking the bull by the horns immediately.

In order to whiddle my many interests down to a research topic, I have been reading relevant existing research and searching available data archives. For the thesis, my goal is to answer my research question utilizing secondary data (or data that already exists for a different purpose) so that I can build upon it with my own research once I am in the multiple year doctoral program. This thesis' goal is to prove I can write, properly utilize research methods, interprets results appropriately, understand limitations, build an appropriate literature review, determine conclusions, and offer avenues for further studies. 

I've been playing with many ideas, but think I'm leaning toward a theory that focuses on early victimization of females and it's possible ties to future criminal activity. I'm specifically looking at connecting it to women and white collar crimes. From what I can tell, there has not been much research done connecting the theory to white collar crimes. I need to figure out, though, if I could somehow review PSI/PSR data in order to find the early victimization data to connect with the women convicted of the big three white collar crimes (embezzlement, fraud, forgery).

My hope is that after the thesis, I can take this all a step further and see if an addiction link is prevalent for white collar female offenders who were victimized and if that addiction preceded their white collar crime.

As I've been researching articles to find similar and informative studies, I've come across some interesting research. One actually quite bothered me as it said that white collar offenses were an effect of being in high standing and refusing to reach out for help - yet so many I know that committed these types of crimes had addictions, were of average standing in their communities, and were to the point of being physically/emotionally/ mentally unable to ask for help. That's a really different thing. So many studies have been done solely on men, and most not on people struggling with addiction. I hope to help fill in that gap.

From what I could initially find, there's only one large study that looked directly at the impact of gambling on white collar crime (all males). The study concluded that gambling increases in cities had no effect on white collar crimes. It's a fairly old study and perhaps it would be worthwhile to replicate it a decade or more later (now). There's a lot of articles about increases in crimes related to drug addiction.

I found only one journal article specific to women and white collar crime. The researchers found that women committed the crimes to feed their family and/or take care of loved ones. Well, those results certainly wouldn't fit most the white collar offenders I knew in Carswell. In fact, most the white collar offenders I knew, actually had no mens rea (criminal intent) at all when offending. They were the "fall gals" for bigger fish, addicted to drugs/alcohol/men/gambling, and/or abused, etc. Sure, there were certainly the desperate, there were also the intentional forgers and the greedy, but they were the rare ones. We all could tell who they were and usually they planned to walk out and go right back to their not so lawful ways. They are career criminals, like so many others. 

I'm curious about the others though. Those who never really saw themselves as making an active choice to commit a crime. Those who at some point lost the ability to make rational decisions or to be the intelligent, capable person they exude themselves to be to the world. If we can find out some insights into why they commit crime, then maybe we can find the alternatives we need for them from the same prisons as those that chose lives of crime.

Maybe my research can be a step in that direction.