What Works?

• Author: Mariel Alper,Sally S. Simpson,Natalie Schell‐Busey,Melissa Rorie
• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Date: 01 May 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12195

RESEARCH ARTICLE

CORPORATE CRIME DETERRENCE

What Works?

A Systematic Review of Corporate Crime Deterrence

Natalie Schell-Busey

Rowan University

Sally S. Simpson

University of Maryland—College Park

Melissa Rorie

University of Nevada—Las Vegas

Mariel Alper

University of Minnesota Law School

Research Summary

We conducted a meta-analysis of corporatecrime deterrence strategies by using 80 effect

sizes calculated from 58 studies in four treatment areas—Law, Punitive Sanctions,

Regulatory Policy, and Multiple Treatments. Of the single-treatment strategies, only

Regulatory Policy produced a significant deterrent impact at the company level, but the

results were not consistent across all study and effect size types. Studies examining mul-

tiple treatments, though, produced a consistent, significant deterrent effect on offending

at both the individual and company levels.

Policy Implications

Our results suggest that regulatorypolicies that involve consistent inspections and include

a cooperative or educational component aimed at the industry may have a substantial

impact on corporate offending. However, a mixture of agency interventions will likely

have the biggest impact on broadly defined corporate crime. The variety of offenders

and behaviors included in corporate crime and its relative complexity likely necessitate

multiple intervention strategies, which is similar to the “pulling levers” approach

Direct correspondence to Natalie Schell-Busey, Law & Justice Studies, Rowan University, 201 Mullica Hill Road,

Glassboro, NJ 08028 (e-mail: schell-busey@rowan.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12195 C2016 American Society of Criminology 387

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 15 rIssue 2

Research Article Corporate Crime Deterrence

developed to deter gang violence and the responsive regulation strategy advocated by

Braithwaite (2011). However, given some of the shortcomings in the literature, we

also recommend that scholars and practitioners more clearly and consistently define

the phenomenon of “corporate crime” and target evaluation research toward specific

programs and interventions.

Keywords

corporate crime, deterrence, meta-analysis, regulatory policy, multiple treatments

Evaluation research in criminal justice has a long history that begins with the

Cambridge-Somerville Youth Studyin 1937 (McCord and McCord, 1959). How-

ever, concerns regarding program effectiveness reached fever pitch in the 1970s

(Cullen and Gendreau, 2000), and criminal justice scholars were called on to establish

“what works, what doesn’t and what’s promising” across a variety of different spheres (e.g.,

the “Maryland Report”; Sherman et al., 1997). The Campbell Collaboration (C2) was

founded to produce up-to-date research summaries about the effects of interventions in

education, crime and justice, and social welfare with the proposed intention that such re-

views could be used to inform decision making about programs and policies in these areas

(Petrosino, Boruch, Soydan, Duggan, and Sanchez-Meca, 2001). These “evidence-based”

efforts to synthesize and decipher knowledge typically use a specific methodological tech-

nique, meta-analysis, to draw inferences about the merits of assorted programs and policies

(Cullen and Gendreau, 2000).

Nearly all systematic reviews in the crime and justice area focus on traditional types of

offenders and/or offenses. Yet,newly emerging crime problems, such as cross-border human

trafficking (Reichel, 2008) and cybercrime (Grabosky,2014; Maimon, Alper, Sobesto, and

Cukier, 2014), as well as old problems, such as white-collar crime, are gaining societal

urgency and currency—white-collar crime, for example, has reemerged in light of the

recent mortgage meltdown and global financial crisis (Deflem, 2011; Simpson and Yeager,

2015). With a few exceptions (Schell-Busey, 2009; Van Der Laan, Smit, Busschers, and

Aarten, 2011), literature summaries of these subjects rely mainly on narrative reviews where

“studies are described discursively and afforded relative importance by the reviewer” (Pratt,

2011: 1). The research reported here fills this void by offering a quantitative synthesis of

research on corporate crime with a meta-analytic approach that focuses on intervention

efforts to prevent and control (“deter”) corporate crime. Given that the myriad of possible

strategies, programs, and practices designed to achieve this aim would be overwhelming for

one systematic review, our efforts concentrate on studies of formal legal interventions and

corporate deterrence. In the next section, we define the concept of corporate crime and draw

from the literature to describe the theory and mechanisms of corporate deterrence. Then

we discuss the rationale and design of the meta-analysis before reporting on the findings.

388 Criminology & Public Policy