Abstract
Thank you for securing a copy of Volume 7, Issue 2, of the Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime (JWCCC). We are grateful to the authors, reviewers, editorial board members, and production team (Sage) for the range of efforts that co-produced this issue. We also wish to thank our readership for your continued engagement with the journal.
This issue contains five original research articles and one book review. Collectively, the research articles speak to canonical questions and concerns in the criminological study of white-collar and corporate crime in varied settings, while also touching on novel, emergent challenges and current events. We are also pleased to feature an original research article on teaching white-collar and corporate crime.
The first article, The Role of Race and Gender in Corporate and Elite White-Collar Offending: Gender and the Theory of Racial Privilege and Offending (TRPO), draws from survey data on 900+ respondents, investigating whether and to what degree racial privilege is mediated by gender. Importantly, their findings both reaffirm extant literature while also identifying counterintuitive trends, underscoring the need for continued research.
The second article, Enabling risk-taking in corporate crime: The role of bailouts, John W. Heeren and David Shichor examine the role of bailouts and permissive regulatory regimes in incentivizing a range of negative outcomes (some of which are illegal) in the banking and finance industry. This article connects rational choice theory (e.g., risk-tolerance) to the legal, ideological, and governmental structures that, as the authors argue, normalize and even enable risk-taking in the banking and finance industry.
The third paper by Brandon Dulisse and co-authors Nate Connealy, Amanda Harrison, and Matthew Logan, gives direct treatment to the emergent topic of cryptocurrency. Drawing from the established pop culture reference to the ‘finance bro’ and ‘tech bro’ – this paper, titled The myth of the ‘crypto-bro’: Examining the influence of gender on fraud victimization risk among cryptocurrency owners provides a timely empirical snapshot into the role of gender in mediating cryptocurrency engagement, participation, investments, and outcome experiences. Importantly, the paper not only examines how gender is associated with outcomes like cryptocurrency fraud, but prompts us to think more broadly about crypto culture.
The penultimate original article is by Jelmar Meester, Marieke Kluin, Arjan Blokland, and Wim Huisman. Titled The diversity of corporate offending: A Case study on Dutch inland shipping, this article draws from regulatory inspection data from 2015 to 2020 to understand the regulatory regime of Dutch inland shipping, and to explore whether there are notable patterns among repeat violators. The authors find a broad spectrum of regulatory offenders, ranging from highly specialized to generalized violations.
The fifth and final original research article, aptly titled by co-authors Megan Parker and Mary Dodge, provides An Exploration of Best Teaching Practices in White-Collar Crime. As many college and university-based readers and white-collar crime specialists know, there are a range of reasons for why white-collar and corporate crime is underrepresented in criminal justice and criminological curricula at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Drawing from an analysis of syllabi and interviews with 23 faculty members, authors Parker and Dodge provide much needed insight into how researchers and educators might initiate or reinvigorate courses and learning opportunities on white collar crime.
The issue concludes with a book review by Allen Copenhaver, with an appraisal of Igor Prusa’s Scandal in Japan: Transgression, performance and ritual (Routledge, 2024). We encourage readers to engage with this text, and we thank our Book Review Editor, Hanna Malik, for facilitating the reviews of timely and interdisciplinary books.