The effectiveness of compliance programmes in white-collar crime prevention: The role of crime convenience in the compliance–crime conviction status relationship

Abstract

The literature discusses the effectiveness of compliance systems in preventing white-collar crime. Compliance programmes in organisations focus on processes to facilitate crime desistance and have often been studied as organisational-level mechanisms for crime prevention targeting crime-opportunity structures. The extensive academic literature on white-collar crime prevention is increasingly recognising the role of individual traits as key predictors of rule-violating decisions. Yet, the perceptual and evaluative dispositions of executives – as they manifest within the context of compliance programmes – have received limited attention. We draw on convenience theory, which examines crime propensity as shaped by an individual's perceptions and evaluations, to explore the perceptual pathway through which decision-makers, as receivers of compliance-related normative pressures evaluate crime convenience. In doing so, we aim to assess the effectiveness of compliance programmes by examining their relationship with the status of conviction for white-collar crime through the perceived compliance pressures–perceived crime convenience pathway. We conducted a survey on a unique and hard-to-access sample of 102 Spanish executives and directors, 23 of whom were serving prison sentences for white-collar crimes. We used partial least squares techniques to explore the relationship between perceived compliance pressures, perceived crime convenience, and the status of conviction for white-collar crime. Results show that managers’ perception of crime convenience fully mediates the significant and positive effect that perceived pressures to adopt compliance programmes have on conviction status. The paper contributes to the literature on compliance effectiveness by incorporating the role of individual behavioural dimensions such as evaluative perceptions, and their impact on the status of conviction. It also aims to enrich convenience theory by proposing new insights into the compliance-convenience relationship, and by supporting the applicability of convenience theory to incarcerated white-collar crime offenders.