As many of you know, I have been researching employee theft, occupational crime, dishonesty, and workplace deviance for nearly thirty years. Regularly I peruse the scholarly journals and academic publications in the library looking for new research studies that can help us all better understand this phenomenon. This column will feature a couple of studies that may shed some new light on this continuing problem. I have included the full citations so you can find these publications online or in your local library to read and share with your staff. If you can't find the articles, send me an email, and I will try to get the original sources to you. If you do not have direct access to a major research library, try using googlescholar.com.

"Workplace Theft: An Analysis of Student-Employee Offenders and Job Attributes"

The first article is authored by Elizabeth Ehrhardt Mustaine (University of Central Florida) and Richard Tewksbury (University of Louisville) and published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice 27:1 (pages 111 – 127, 2002). This is a relatively recent study of employee theft that surveyed a large population of college students attending a number of major universities. Since existing research suggests that many dishonest employees are younger, part-time, untenured, and dissatisfied, these two researchers concluded that college students would make an ideal sample of employees to survey about their occupational criminal behavior.

They conducted a self-report survey of 1,531 students in the fall of 1996 asking them to report personal demographics, opportunity, and previous theft activities. The findings are consistent with a number of other studies (including mine), but with some rather unique results. The authors found that three factors differentiate between those who admitted stealing at work from those who did not. Some of these predictors included theft behaviors that occurred in other settings.

For example, most impressive was the fact that students who have admitted that they recently have broken into a motor vehicle were almost fourteen (13.87) times more likely to steal from their employers. Moreover, students who have recently stolen something from a stranger were over four times (4.35) more likely to steal at work. Also of significant interest was the fact that ex-convicts were nearly four times (3.59) more likely to admit stealing from their place of work than those respondents who have never been sent to prison.

There were a few other findings of interest. Alcohol use was related to admitting stealing at work. Public intoxication, but not drug use, predicted admitted workplace theft. College students who reported that they have been drunk in public were 1.56 times more likely to admit stealing while at work. Finally, the more jobs that a student has had in the past and the more often these jobs involved cash handling was also related to workplace theft, but at a lower level of predictive power.

We must remember that this study was conducted with college students and used self-reported indicators of workplace theft. Nevertheless, even with this caveat about the sample, the policy implications are significant.

• First, drug testing may be a good indicator of current and future drug use, but may not be the best indicator of theft behavior.
• Second, criminal background checks that screen out applicants with prior convictions that resulted in incarceration are obviously supported by this screening practice.
• Third, as we know in social science, the best indicators of future behavior is past behavior, especially when we consider that stealing in non-employment situations is a very good predictor of workplace theft.

The principal paradox of this study is the finding that with the exception of the above factors, most of which retailers screen for already, the average college student who does not steal is not dramatically different from the one who does. Since we rely on these young people for a substantial proportion of the retail workforce, there is clearly no "silver bullet" that can distinguish those who will steal at work from those who will not.

"Dishonest Associates in the Workplace: The Correlation between Motivation and Opportunity in Retail among Employee Theft(s)"

The second study that I would like to draw attention to is an excellent master's thesis written in May of 2009 by Edith Marie Fikes who studied at the University of Texas in Arlington. Unlike many studies, such as the one above that rely upon self-report methodologies, this study reviews the characteristics of associates who were terminated for instances of employee theft by a single anonymous retailer. All of these cases were detected between the first of July 2007 and the end of June 2008. This study employed the classic theoretical theft triangle of motivation, opportunity, and rationalization first introduced by the renowned white-collar crime and embezzlement scholar, Donald Cressey.

Fikes was granted access to the files of all 502 employees apprehended for theft during this one-year period. She reports that the most common associate apprehended was a white male (59%) between the ages of 18 to 22 years old (48%), employed on an hourly basis (88%), who worked on average no more than six months before being caught (36%). The amount stolen averaged $523, usually occurred at the point of sale (38%), and was discovered by management (53.5%), but not reported by a fellow associate (only 15.4%). Not surprisingly, termination without criminal charges filed was the most typical final disposition of these cases (87%).

What really makes this study unique is that the researcher also inquired as to whether the employer inadvertently created an opportunity for the crime to occur by not creating a credible set of control policies and procedures designed to reduce the opportunity for dishonesty. She found that theft increased significantly when management failed to do any of the following:

• Damaged merchandise case not secured,
• Entering or exiting the building alone allowed,
• Failure to check returns for contents,
• Failure to inspect trash,
• Failure to process non-receipted returns,
• Failure to inspect refund report,
• Failure to scan product,
• Failure to secure case pick-up,
• Failure to secure customers credit cards,
• Failure to secure merchandise,
• Failure to secure product per merchandising guidelines,
• Improper or unauthorized use of company funds,
• Incorrect register access,
• Poor key controls,
• Lock-up door propped open,
• Bag checks not conducted,
• Manager not present at the front lanes,
• Password integrity problems,
• Unauthorized associate in lock up, and
• Unauthorized price over-rides.

In short, if the loss incurred was partially the fault of the actions or lack of action by management, the incident was coded as such. Using these well-used criteria, the author found that "77% or 369 of the associates terminated for theft had an opportunity created for them by management to steal."

While this research does not intend to "blame the victim" for the dishonesty of retail associates, it does raise valid questions about the role that inadequate controls and poorly implemented asset protection policies play in creating the ideal opportunity for a motivated offender to act on various temptations to steal.

More to Come

Well-designed, peer-reviewed research studies conducted by qualified criminologists often do not find their way into the reading lists or desks of retail and LP executives. My hope is that these two studies, as well as other articles to be discussed in future columns, will provide plenty of material to stimulate discussion and reassessment of the policies and practices used to deter, prevent, and detect dishonesty by retail sales associates in the current business and social environment.

During this past fall semester, I was on an academic sabbatical. This is a time when professors are temporarily relieved of their everyday teaching and administrative duties in order to travel, write, conduct research, and generally "recharge their intellectual batteries."

In October I was invited to Bogotá, Colombia, to present a keynote presentation at the very first loss prevention conference sponsored by FENALCO, which is the Colombian national retail association. Then in November my wife and I traveled to northern Thailand primarily to visit the cities of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rei. We rode elephants, crossed the Mekong River into Laos, Myanmar, and visited the Golden Triangle. Moreover, we spent a significant share of our time during this three-week Southeast Asia trip in the remarkably modern city-state of Singapore.

The Republic of Singapore

According to Wikipedia, the Republic of Singapore is a collection of sixty-three islands with a population of 5.18 million people. Singapore is highly urbanized, yet remarkably, almost half of the country is covered by greenery. More land is being created for development each day through land reclamation. The port of Singapore is one of the five busiest, most notable for being the biggest transshipment port in the world. On a clear day the harbor is full of container ships as far as the eye can see. The country is a very wealthy one, as it is home to more millionaire households per capita than any other in the world. The World Bank notes Singapore as the "easiest place in the world to do business."

Thanks to some personal contacts arranged by Rex Gillette, a former resident of Singapore during his long career with ADT, I experienced visits with a number of loss prevention directors and retail stores, talking at length to them about their retail crime problems. It turns out, however, most types of crime, especially serious property and violent crime, are almost non-existent in Singapore. This is due to the fact that this former British colony is a very tightly controlled social environment. Littering, spitting on the sidewalk, and even chewing gum are all considered illegal activities in Singapore. You may recall that this is the place that gave an American teenager a painful "caning" as his punishment for vandalizing a car in 1994.

Crime is just not tolerated in Singapore. You learn this very quickly even before arrival. As your plane lands, the cabin attendants remind the passengers that drug trafficking is punishable by death. In fact, during the week we arrived, three suspects were arrested at the airport for drug possession and were immediately tried and sentenced to be hung. In short, Singapore just does not tolerate crime.

Citywide Video Surveillance

Remarkably, you don't feel an oppressive police presence while visiting the city. We did see police dressed in army fatigues carrying machine guns at "immigration and customs" while in the airport, but after that it was rare to see even a single uniformed police officer walking the streets or riding in a patrol car. This is due to the fact that the whole city is blanketed by a very sophisticated CCTV system that apparently is watching your every move in public. If a crime is detected on camera, police are quickly dispatched to the scene of the offense. A former police officer, now working as a retail security guard, told me that most officers are not walking a beat, but rather, sitting in centralized offices watching CCTV monitors during their typical shifts.

Cameras are everywhere with obvious signage to warn the citizen who does not recognize the presence of video surveillance. You see cameras on the streets placed on tall poles, in parking ramps, on sidewalks, in hotel lobbies, and in virtually all businesses. The impression that you get in Singapore is that you are constantly being watched. At first I found this level of surveillance to be somewhat disconcerting, but when I asked typical residents, they told me that they were glad that police and security were constantly watching and protecting them. Singapore citizens seemed reassured that crime was well under control, and they expressed that they felt safer as a result of the public-view video "eyes" that were seemingly everywhere.

As you might expect, CCTV is used extensively in the typical retail store as well. I visited one retail store located in the "Little India" section of town that consisted of a number of interconnected buildings that were covered by 1,500 separate cameras. The monitor control room was larger and more impressive than anything that I had ever seen. Attentive LP staffers were found sitting in this relatively small room all day long, monitoring hundreds of both fixed and pan, tilt, and zoom video cameras. Shoppers were monitored from the moment that they entered the store until they left.

The LP director in this store told me that they made many apprehensions that were all criminally prosecuted due to a close relationship between the store and the police precinct officers. He also felt that the deterrent effect of using this many cameras profoundly reduced store shrinkage. Signage, fixed cameras, and domes were everywhere in the store, making sure that both the shopper and the employee knew that they were always being observed. Yes, the feeling was that "big brother" was constantly watching, but the effect was clearly believed to create a positive atmosphere to all those in the store environment, not an oppressive draconian atmosphere like might be experienced in a high-security prison or jail.

Retail Crime

CCTV was not the only deterrent to retail crime. Other factors also make Singapore a safe place to live and work. For example, I asked about the prevalence of armed robberies of convenience stores. The response was that they seldom occurred. One LP director was hard pressed to come up with two recent robbery examples, one with a club and the other with a knife. Gun possession is illegal in Singapore, except at shooting clubs where personal guns are kept and unlocked only when used.

I asked about employees stealing from the cash drawer and was told that it seldom happened. In Singapore most retailers directly garnish the wages of employees who present cash drawers with cash shortages. The most common internal retail theft seems to be of food and edible products, not hard goods or cash.

External theft seems to be focused on those products that are on outpost tables near entrances and exits where they can be easily taken. Virtually all packages and shopping bags are sealed with simple nylon friction ties that cannot be removed while in the store or taken to other stores for shoplifting purposes. When I raised the topic of ORC, most retail LP executives had heard the term, but were not experiencing the level of organized gang crime that we see here in the U.S.

The Republic of Singapore is a modern, beautiful city that has made crime control and public order a major priority. Civil liberties and freedoms from search and surveillance have been placed behind the goal of living in a crime-free society. I suspect that the ACLU would label Singapore a repressive society, but I did not experience this feeling. In fact, it was nice to know that my person, wallet, camera, and passport were being protected in this virtually crime-free environment.

In 1968 the legal scholar Herbert Packer wrote that crime control and civil liberty can be located at two ends of a continuum in most societies. Clearly the people of Singapore have moved the pendulum of this continuum toward the goal of crime control at the possible expense of some civil liberties and due process of law. Only time will tell whether this trade off will be detrimental to their democracy.

This past August, large-scale rioting took place in London and other United Kingdom cities. Looting of stores, setting fires, and major acts of civil disobedience were all precipitated by the shooting of a black man named Mark Duggan by the London police.

On August 6th, during a peaceful march protesting the Duggan shooting, a heavy-handed police response to the march triggered serious arson, thefts, and aggravated shoplifting. Rioting with arson soon spread to various London boroughs and then other English cities. The most severe disturbances outside London occurred in Bristol and cities in the Midlands and the northwest of England. Related outbreaks also occurred in many smaller towns and cities in England. The participants were most commonly unemployed minority youths who wore black hoodies, scarves, and ski masks to hide their identities from the police and authorities. By August 15th about 3,100 people had been arrested, of whom more than 1,000 were formally charged. Five people died and at least sixteen others were injured as a direct result of related violent acts. An estimated £200 million worth of property damage was incurred, and local economic activity was significantly compromised.

Police action was blamed for the initial riot, and the subsequent police reaction was heavily criticized as being neither appropriate nor sufficiently effective. In England and elsewhere these riots have generated significant ongoing debate among political, social, and academic figures about the causes for and context in which they happened.

Conditions in America

While we in America watched the large-scale devastation of this major world city from afar, it produced a number of different reactions. First, one would hope that our police forces would have responded faster and in greater numbers, so this situation never would have expanded to the level seen in London and various other large U.K. cities.

Second, many believe that the social conditions in the U.S. are not as bad as in the U.K. and, therefore, are not conducive to generating this level or scope of civil disobedience. I would like to argue that. While the first of these statements is hopefully correct, the second statement is clearly wrong. America is sitting on a powder keg of inequity that could, under the right conditions, explode into the type of serious rioting, looting, and arson seen in London. Here are some relevant social and economic facts to consider.

Currently in the United States, our levels of poverty, unemployment, and incarceration, especially among youth and people of color, are at unprecedented numbers. Recent data has shown that the economic downturn in our society is hurting minorities at a much greater level than the largely white middle and upper classes. The unemployment rate for African Americans has always been higher than the national average.

Unfortunately, the problem has gotten worse.

In June 2011 CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reported that black unemployment now is at Depression-era levels. The most recent figures show African-American joblessness at 16.2 percent. For black males, it's 17.5 percent, and for black teens, it's nearly 41 percent.

Moreover, tensions between the police and the poor, especially among racial minorities, in most cities continue to be a significant problem. While "to serve and protect" is the typical police department motto, many people living in our inner cities believe that the police are there "to oppress and control." Recent civil and criminal court cases proving police corruption and abuse like those found in New York and post-Katrina New Orleans are not just limited to those two locations.

Impact of Poverty

Poverty in the U.S. has always been and continues to be the primary fuel for urban unrest. The Pew Research Center recently issued a report that concludes that the ongoing recession has led to the largest wealth disparity in twenty-five years for minorities as compared to whites. The median wealth of white households is 18 times greater than the median net worth of Hispanic households and 20 times that of black households. Based upon 2009 Census data, this study also states that from 2005 to 2009, the share of households with zero or negative net worth rose from 23 to 31 percent for Hispanics, 29 to 35 percent for blacks, 12 to 19 percent for Asians, and 11 to 15 percent for whites.

These statistics indicate that we have some desperately poor people in America, especially in the ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods of our larger urban centers. These are people who are getting poorer by the day, as they see the rich in America getting richer. Readers of this column know that retail sales for the very richest have not dropped significantly.

If a triggering event occurs that brings desperate people to the streets, such as a racially biased incident, cities in the U.S. might be burning too. Remember this has happened in America a number of times in recent decades. On April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted white police officers for the video-taped beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. Later in the Los Angeles Watts neighborhood during 1965, and again in 1997 in the slums of Detroit, harsh police tactics or violence against suspects brought thousands to the streets to riot, steal, vandalize, and burn.

Those involved often are people who feel disenfranchised from the "American Dream." Unfortunately, there are more and more people in our country each day who find themselves in this predicament. We should not be surprised if they take action and go into the streets to protest the economic and social crisis in which they now find themselves. Many criminologists and sociologists privately wonder why this has not yet happened in our country given the level of economic adversity.

Obviously, the solution to this problem is a better economy with more jobs. Encouraging people to again feel that a better future lies ahead should be our nation's and industry's primary goal. Preventing losses to our stores will no doubt be a corollary benefit.

If you want to read a good book on this subject, I strongly recommend, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice by Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton (Allyn & Bacon, 2009).

The whole retail industry breathed a collective sigh of relief recently when the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision in June not to hear a gender wage inequity case as a "class-action suit" against Walmart. The case was focused on whether or not the largest employer in the world could be accused in civil court with collectively discriminating against numerous women in many different states. All these suits alleged that the plaintiffs were not paid equitably when compared to their male counterparts. If the case had gone forward as a class-action lawsuit, this ruling would have set a major precedent encouraging numerous other similar class-action lawsuits to be lodged against other retailers and large employers.

The Judges' Opinions

As background to this decision, in The New York Times on June 20, 2011, Adam Liptak reported the following:

The Supreme Court on Monday threw out an enormous employment discrimination class-action suit against Wal-Mart [sic] that had sought billions of dollars on behalf of as many as 1.5 million female workers. The suit claimed that Wal-Mart's policies and practices had led to countless discriminatory decisions over pay and promotions. The court divided 5 to 4 along ideological lines on the basic question in the case—whether the suit satisfied a requirement of the class-action rules that "there are questions of law or fact common to the class" of female employees. The court's five more conservative justices said no, shutting down the suit and limiting the ability of other plaintiffs to band together in large class actions. The court was unanimous, however, in saying that the plaintiffs' lawyers had improperly sued under a part of the class-action rules that was not primarily concerned with monetary claims. The plaintiffs sought to make that case with testimony from William T. Bielby, a sociologist specializing in social framework analysis. Professor Bielby told a lower court that he had collected general "scientific evidence about gender bias, stereotypes and the structure and dynamics of gender inequality in organizations." He said he also had reviewed extensive litigation materials gathered by the lawyers in the case. He concluded that Wal-Mart's culture might foster pay and other disparities through a centralized personnel policy that allowed for subjective decisions by local managers. Such practices, he argued, allowed stereotypes to sway personnel choices, making "decisions about compensation and promotion vulnerable to gender bias."

Justice Scalia rejected the testimony, which he called crucial to the plaintiffs' case. "It is worlds away," he wrote, "from 'significant proof' that Wal-Mart 'operated under a general policy of discrimination.' " Although she agreed with her colleagues in the unanimous decision that this petition was not worthy of a class-action treatment, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out that both the statistics presented by the plaintiffs and their individual accounts were evidence that "gender bias suffused Wal-Mart's corporate culture." She said, for instance, that women filled 70 percent of the hourly jobs, but only 33 percent of management positions and that "senior management often refer to female associates as 'little Janie Qs.' " Justice Ginsburg went on to say, "The practice of delegating to supervisors large discretion to make personnel decisions, uncontrolled by formal standards, has long been known to have the potential to produce disparate effects," she wrote. "Managers, like all humankind, may be prey to biases of which they are unaware."

Discrimination-Free Workplace

In my opinion, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this decision is not the refusal of the Supreme Court to hear this case as a class action. Based upon the facts of the petition, it is quite understandable that the justices concluded that all these many cases were not sufficiently similar or identical. Instead, to me the most alarming part of this decision is the mere fact that there are still scores of cases based upon gender wage discrimination being filed against major retail firms. If wage inequity still exists on such a broad scale in the industry, despite our many years of effort to increase diversity and fairness, then we are a long way from a discrimination-free workplace.

As professionals charged with addressing the underlying causes of employee theft, we should recognize that this situation creates the perfect environment for encouraging minority retail associates to take informal action on their own to correct perceived workplace inequity. In other words, gender...or racial and ethnic...wage inequity creates a social climate that encourages pilferage, theft, dishonesty, and counterproductive behavior to be rationalized as a justified response in the mind of these employees. This means that the seeds of employee dishonesty may still be present in many companies and workplaces all across the land. I hope that most readers of this column will agree that this is not a healthy situation.

Perceptions of Retail Careers

When I ask the twenty-something aged college students enrolled in my classes, especially women, racial, and ethnic minorities, whether they are receptive to working in retail, their first answer is usually in the affirmative. In fact, many are already working part-time jobs in either retailing or the food-service industry. "Yes" remains their answer until you ask them if they wish to continue working in retail after receiving their college degrees. Then the answer usually changes to a strong "no."

Like it or not, retail sales as well as retail loss prevention are not viewed by most college students as an occupation worth pursuing. In fact, most people view retailing as a temporary job, not for permanent employment or a long-term career. This tells me that retailing still has not created a climate that encourages long-term commitment, honesty, and ethical behavior. For many retail associates, who feel they have little or no power in the work organization, we are creating exactly the opposite environment.

It was Albert Einstein who defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results." Should those of us in loss prevention and retail management be expecting different results when we continue to treat our employees as temporary or marginal workers? If so, perhaps we should not be surprised if they decide that stealing from their employers is a perfectly justified response to an unsatisfactory workplace situation.

Nature Versus Nurture

As the human genome is ever more accurately mapped by medical and biological researchers, one of the most intriguing questions involves whether there is a gene that influences involvement in criminal behavior.

From the very beginnings of the study of deviant behavior, criminologists have hypothesized that crime propensity might be inherited and can be passed from generation to generation. Over the past few hundred years, crime researchers alternatively have accepted and then dismissed this theory of criminal behavior. As a result, the genetic linkage to crime has become one of the most controversial debates in the discipline.

Early criminologists, such as the nineteenth-century Italian medical doctor, Cesare Lombroso, discovered that criminals locked in prison had bushy eyebrows, sloping foreheads, and "ape-like" characteristics. He hypothesized that the antisocial behavior of criminals was due to what he called an "atavistic throwback" to earlier pre-human traits. When this research was subjected to more scientific examination, it was discovered that these scary-looking people were more likely to be incarcerated and accused of offenses, regardless of whether they were, in fact, guilty of crime. The spurious nature of early criminological research of this type was provocative, but generally not supported by fact.

New Findings

Over the decades, many other criminological theories emerged that linked crime to genetic characteristics, but were not well supported by scientific examination. Recently, however, Florida State University criminologist, Kevin Beaver, has published a series of well-vetted, scientifically valid papers that suggest that perhaps adolescent males with delinquent peers are more likely to possess a specific genetic trait. In 2008 Beaver and his colleagues' research had a groundbreaking effect on the discipline because it showed that the propensity in some adolescents to affiliate with delinquent peers is tied up in a single genome.

As I have noted, criminological research has long linked antisocial, drug-using, and criminal behavior to delinquent peers. In fact, belonging to such a peer group is one of the strongest correlates to both youthful and adult crime. But the study led by Beaver is the first to establish a statistically significant association between an affinity for antisocial peer groups and a particular variation (called the 10-repeat allele) of the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1).

Moreover, the study's analysis of family, peer, and DNA data from 1,816 boys in middle and high school found that the association between DAT1 and delinquent peer affiliation applied primarily for those who had both the 10-repeat allele and a high-risk family environment, meaning one marked by a disengaged mother and an absence of maternal affection. 

Recently, Florida State University criminologist, Kevin Beaver, has published a series of well-vetted, scientifically valid papers that suggest that perhaps adolescent males with delinquent peers are more likely to possess a specific genetic trait.

Alternatively, adolescent males with the very same gene variation who lived in low-risk families, that is those with high levels of maternal engagement and warmth, showed no statistically relevant affinity for antisocial friends.

Role of Environment

"Our research has confirmed the importance of not only the genome, but also the environment," Beaver said. "With a sample comprised of 1,816 individuals, more than usual for a genetic study, we were able to document a clear link between DAT1 and delinquent peers for adolescents raised in high-risk families while finding little or no such link in those from low-risk families. As a result, we now have genuine empirical evidence that the social and family environment in an adolescent's life can either exacerbate or blunt genetic effects."

Beaver worked with research colleagues John Paul Wright, an associate professor and senior research fellow at the University of Cincinnati, and Matt DeLisi, an associate professor of sociology at Iowa State University.

The biosocial data analyzed by Beaver and his two coauthors derived from "Add Health," an ongoing project focused on adolescent health that is administered by the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and funded largely by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Since the program began in 1994, a total of nearly 2,800 nationally representative male and female adolescents have been genotyped and interviewed.

"We can only hypothesize why we saw the effect of DAT1 only in male adolescents from high-risk families," said Beaver, who will continue his research into the close relationship between genotype and environmental factors—a phenomenon known in the field of behavioral genetics as the "gene X environment correlation."

"Perhaps the 10-repeat allele is triggered by constant stress or the general lack of support, whereas in low-risk households, the variation might remain inactive," he said. "Or it's possible that the 10-repeat allele increases an adolescent boy's attraction to delinquent peers regardless of family type, but parents from low-risk families are simply better able to monitor and control such genetic tendencies."

Interestingly, among female adolescents who carry the 10-repeat allele, Beaver and his colleagues found no statistically significant affinity for antisocial peers, regardless of whether the girls lived in a high-risk or a low-risk family environment.

Complex Explanations

Does this mean that someday we will identify a single gene for theft, helping us understand the causes of employee dishonesty or shoplifting? I doubt it. Personally, I still believe that most of the variation in property-theft behavior can be best explained by social learning, differential association, rational choice, and deterrence theories. None of these theories are based upon the genetic differences found in the human genome. However, I am willing to keep my mind open for new developments in the complex explanations that we can use to better understand why employees steal from their employers and customers shoplift from retail stores.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The original quotes used above attributed to Kevin Beaver are from ScienceDaily, retrieved March 15, 2011, from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081001130004.htm. To read the original article, see "Delinquent Peer Group Formation: Evidence of a Gene X Environment Correlation" by Kevin Beaver, John P. Wright, and Matt DeLisi, published in The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 2008, 169 (3): 227 – 244.