Strategies and Limits on Crime Prevention within Organisational Settings

Abstract

In the framework of crime within organizational settings, certain duties of surveillance and control by the employer can be identified to avoid the attribution of liability for those crimes committed by others within the organization. On the other hand, some limits also arise from the employer’s duty to respect an employee’s privacy. As a result, the implementation of prevention and control strategies must be put into practice respecting certain principles in order to balance conflicting interests, so that no strategies can be applied without certain boundaries. A comprehensive analysis of this problem, using an interdisciplinary focus, is carried out to identify and better understand (i) the types of crimes perpetrated within an organizational setting, (ii) the tools and ways of implementing control, and (ii) the deriving privacy conflicts. This analysis is aimed at informing decision–making issues regarding prevention policies or strategies adopted by public and private agents, as well as the elaboration process and application of norms – whether criminal, organizational or administrative ones. An analysis of the justifications that employers may invoke in their favor in certain limited cases cannot be completed without assessing (i) the contextual particularities of the company’s environment, (ii) the hidden character of the liability risk, and (iii) the way in which the threat embodied by the employee’s crime leaves employers with-out the necessary means to defend themselves against this risk.

Keywords: Insider crime, employee crime, and economic crime