Perceived Types, Causes, and Consequences of Financial Exploitation: Narratives From Older Adults.

OBJECTIVES: The goal of this study was to investigate the perception of financial exploitation and its causes and consequences by older adults who have firsthand experience of being exploited. METHOD: Thirty-one cognitively healthy older adult participants aged 50 or older were drawn from the Finance, Cognition, and Health in Elders Study. In-depth, one-on-one interviews were conducted. Interview transcripts were analyzed using an iterative, data-driven, thematic coding scheme and emergent themes were summarized. RESULTS: Categories of financial exploitation included (a) investment fraud, (b) wage theft/money owed, (c) consumer fraud, (d) imposter schemes, and (e) manipulation by a trusted person. Themes emerged around perceived causes: (a) element of trust, (b) promise of financial security, (c) lack of experience or awareness, (d) decision-making, and (e) interpersonal dynamics. Perceived consequences included negative and positive impacts around (a) finances, (b) financial/consumer behaviors (c) relationships and trust, (d) emotional impact, and (e) future outlook. DISCUSSION: These narratives provide important insights into perceived financial exploitation experiences.

What To Do When Employees Steal: Medical Practices Are a Ripe Target for Embezzlement.

Medical practices are a ripe target for embezzlement.

The Global Wicked Problem of Corruption and Its Risks for Access to HIV/AIDS Medicines.

We discuss how corruption affects access to antiretroviral therapies (ARVs) globally. Recent cases of theft of ARVs, collusion, and manipulation in procurement found in countries such as Central African Republic, Bangladesh, Malawi, and Guinea, show there is still much work to be done to reduce the risk of corruption. This includes addressing the structural weaknesses in procurement mechanisms and supply chain management systems of health commodities and medicines.

Income inequality, poverty and crime across nations.

We examine the relationship between income inequality, poverty, and different types of crime. Our results are consistent with recent research in showing that inequality is unrelated to homicide rates when poverty is controlled. In our multi-level analyses of the International Crime Victimization Survey we find that inequality is unrelated to assault, robbery, burglary, and theft when poverty is controlled. We argue that there are also theoretical reasons to doubt that the level of income inequality of a country affects the likelihood of criminal behaviour.

Link between unemployment and crime in the US: a Markov-Switching approach.

This study has two goals. The first is to use Markov Switching models to identify and analyze the cycles in the unemployment rate and four different types of property-related criminal activities in the US. The second is to apply the nonparametric concordance index of Harding and Pagan (2006) to determine the correlation between the cycles of unemployment rate and property crimes. Findings show that there is a positive but insignificant relationship between the unemployment rate, burglary, larceny, and robbery. However, the unemployment rate has a significant and negative (i.e., a counter-cyclical) relationship with motor-vehicle theft. Therefore, more motor-vehicle thefts occur during economic expansions relative to contractions. Next, we divide the sample into three different subsamples to examine the consistency of the findings. The results show that the co-movements between the unemployment rate and property crimes during recession periods are much weaker, when compared with that of the normal periods of the US economy.

A non-stationary panel data investigation of the unemployment-crime relationship.

Many empirical studies of the economics of crime focus solely on the determinants thereof, and do not consider the dynamic and cross-sectional properties of their data. As a response to this, the current paper offers an in-depth analysis of this issue using data covering 21 Swedish counties from 1975 to 2010. The results suggest that the crimes considered are non-stationary, and that this cannot be attributed to county-specific disparities alone, but that there are also a small number of common stochastic trends to which groups of counties tend to revert. In an attempt to explain these common stochastic trends, we look for a long-run cointegrated relationship between unemployment and crime. Overall, the results do not support cointegration, and suggest that previous findings of a significant unemployment-crime relationship might be spurious.

"Children of the city": juvenile justice, property, and place in England and Scotland, 1945-60.

This article uses cases studies of Dundee and Manchester to explain juvenile property-offending in terms of young people's use of objects and spaces in the period 1945-60. A composite picture is assembled of objects stolen, which reflects growth of the specifically "teenage" consumer market as well as continued significance of young people's contribution to family economies. Concerns about youth, property, and space were reported in newspapers in terms of vandalism and hooliganism. "Play" and "nuisance" were overlapping and contested categories; re-education of young people in the correct use of place, space, and property was a key aim of the postwar juvenile justice system.