Abstract
Assessing crime committed by employees against firms allows collecting key information to improve existing measures of prevention or to adopt more efficient ones within a specific business. This paper presents an original analysis of the level and features of theft and fraud by employees against firms in the Swiss and Italian commercial sector. It provides a clear picture of when and how these incidents developed, highlighting the crucial value, for crime prevention and research, of the data collected through victimisation surveys.
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Notes
- 1.
At European level eight countries have developed national victimization surveys on crime against business: the Netherlands (1989, 1992, 2004–2011), England and Wales (1994, 2002, and 2012), Scotland (1998), Ireland (2004, 2008), Finland (1994/1995, 2010), Estonia (2007), Italy (2008), Switzerland (2010). Moreover, a survey on seven Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo under UNSCR 1244, FYR of Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia) has been developed in 2012, with the main aim of measuring corruption against the private sector, but collecting also data on other specific types of conventional crime.
- 2.
The EUBCS was financed by the European Commission and piloted, in 2012, by Gallup Europe and Transcrime, on 20 EU member states (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia , Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom).
- 3.
The focus is on the Wholesale and retail trade sector, partly because this is one of the economic sectors most affected by employee offences, partly because of data comparability’s reasons.
- 4.
Data presented at the American Society of Criminology conference in Chicago, November 2012.
- 5.
Ibidem.
- 6.
The ItBCS is focused on all the types of crime against enterprises, independently from the type of offender, while the SBCS considers only offences committed by employees.
- 7.
The data presented for Italy refers to the last incident of theft and fraud experienced by businesses in the calendar year 2008. Any information on crimes by employees has been recorded only if the last incident of theft or fraud was committed by an employee. The data for Switzerland considers the most serious incident of theft and fraud by employees experienced by businesses between 2008 and 2010.
- 8.
The Italian final sample counted 2311 commercial companies, the Swiss one 865.
- 9.
The ItBCS defined theft “when somebody steals any property from the business premises, storehouse, vehicles belonging to the business premises, or to the employees” and fraud “when someone gets an unlawful benefit by damaging somebody else, deceiving him/her through simulation or distortion of the facts, leading him/her into error by trickery or deception. Computer fraud is also included”. The SBCS defined theft by employees as “Theft committed by employees inside the firm can be either cash theft or office supplies theft”, and fraud as “Examples of fraud or dishonest behaviour adopted by an employee: Cheating on working hours, vacation or sick days, etc.; Unjustified use of the company’s credit card; Falsification of accounts or documents; Embezzlement; Breach of trust/Asset misappropriation (seek to take advantage of the relationships with clients or competitors for personal gain)”.
- 10.
The response rate of the SBCS is 27 %; the one of the ItBCS is 14 %.
- 11.
The most serious incident experienced by businesses between 2008 and 2010.
- 12.
The most recent incident experienced by businesses in 2008.
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Mugellini, G., Isenring, G., Killias, M. (2014). Patterns of Theft and Fraud by Employees Against the Commercial Sector in Switzerland and in Italy. In: Caneppele, S., Calderoni, F. (eds) Organized Crime, Corruption and Crime Prevention. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01839-3_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01839-3_15
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