ISSN : 2093-3843
The present paper highlights by describing one highly specific type of white collar crimes, industrial secrets leakage, and how it is committed. Next, it attempts to discuss how to manipulate situational factors occurring in the immediate environment. As part of the answer, it explains SCP theory and why white collar crimes such as industrial secrets leakages are differentiated from ordinary street crimes. In doing so, it can be able to identify distinct characteristics of white collar crimes such as industrial secrets leakages that may be necessary to modify the situational crime prevention strategies to apply to white collar crime. In conclusion, the present paper discusses how we might apply interventions affecting the judgment of offenders. By doing so we might design a program to control it using ideas drawn from SCP theory.
Recent trends in the criminal cases without convincing evidence have shown to increase. Consequently, the demand for polygraph examinations to verify the statements offered by conflicting parties has been simultaneously growing. Yet, unfortunately, previous studies rarely focus on the factors that may influence the polygraph results which often proceed to affect legal decisions. Thus, this study compared polygraph test results with prosecutions and court decisions, and offered to provide comprehensive information on the factors related to polygraph, which have shown to influence the agreement rate between the polygraph results and legal decisions. The data used for this research was from examinations of 6,273 cases and 8,609 subjects; these tests were administered in the Korean prosecutors’ offices during 2009 to 2012. Results suggested that the likelihood of drawing a conclusive result differed as a function of the polygraph testing method; a conclusive result was more likely when examinations were done in the paired-testing method compared to the single-testing method. In terms of the overall agreement rate between the polygraph results and the prosecutors’ indictments, 78.6% were in agreement and this rate was significantly affected by the crime and the type of indictment. However, demographic factors such as sex, age and legal status did not influence the overall rate. The analysis for comparing the polygraph test results with the court decisions demonstrated that 83.6% were in agreement. More specifically, the rate of the examiners correctly judging the convicted suspects as guilty in the polygraph tests was as high as 90.8%. This study is the first to use a field data to investigate the factors that are related to polygraph and their effect on legal decisions. The findings will be a significant endeavor in promoting the accuracy of polygraph testing in legal procedure.
We use language to define laws and norms which serve to keep our society safe. However, the people who are to obey the laws, are often reported in studies to experience difficulties in understanding the meaning of the laws because of legal jargon and expressions. The courts in the United States and the EU nations have long been aware of such difficulties that the general public faces, and have sought to promote a greater understanding of legal texts These efforts have recently started in Korea as well. This study was performed in order to investigate the effectiveness of these various attempts to write more readable legal texts both in Korea and abroad. We compared ‘written judgments including legal terms and legal sentences’ and ‘scientific and artistic texts including jargons’ in 6 areas: ‘clarity of the issue’, ‘brevity’, ‘ease of understanding the content’, ‘ease of understanding the terms’, ‘suitability of the length of the sentences’, and ‘suitability of the length of paragraphs’, for the college students. The results showed that the attempts to improve legal terms and legal sentences were effective; however, the subjects still viewed the suitability of the length of sentences and paragraphs as inferior to other texts. Therefore, more systematic and specific improvements need to be made in this area, and we should conduct empirical studies in order to verify the effectiveness of these changes. Possible suggestions were proposed in the general discussion.
Are non-normative behaviors or illegal acts perceived and judged differently depending on the actor’s or the perceiver’s socioeconomic status (SES)? The goals of this article are to review past research on the role of SES in moral judgments and punitive judgments and to suggest directions for future research. Specifically, it is first reviewed how socioeconomic status has been conceptualized and measured in the field of psychology. Then, past research on the effect of SES on moral judgments and its potential mechanisms is reviewed. Past work on how and why punitive judgments vary depending on both the perpetrator’s and the juror’s SES is also reviewed. Finally, suggestions for future research are made and implications that this line of research has in the Korean society are discussed.