This paper is concerned with the everyday economic crimes of ordinary people.Although dishonesty is a core characteristic of these offences, we are not aware of any prior research that examines the direct, relationship between dishonest attitude and economic crime.Based on a survey of the British public, this article presents insights into this relationship.
By profiling the integrity, dishonest disposition and everyday economic criminality of the British public, the study finds a strong relationship between attitudes and harmful twizzlers orange cream pop filled licorice twists dishonest behaviour such that, in a given year, 26 % of adults in the UK commit at least one economic crime.The higher levels of dishonesty in males and younger adults helps to explain their more prolific offending.Both the honesty and age-economic crime curves indicate that the maturation decline in offending is gradual compared to the sharp desistance in early adulthood of the traditional age-crime curve.
Whilst this finding also contradicts the conventional view that economic crime is a middle-aged problem, it helps to explain this perception.By comparing the attitude results to a 2011 study, the research further found that the maturation effect is more pronounced kinkalicious due to a decline in integrity of the under 55 y population so that the younger generations now have a steeper moral hill to climb.