A Comparative Study of the Deterring Effects of Religious and Non-religious Factors on Economic Crimes: Comparing Evin Prisoners with Their Non-criminal Counterparts

Theoretically, the present paper is made up of some competing or alternative theories of white-collar crimes, including Hirschi & Stark’s theory of the Hellfire, Collins and Schmidt’s theory of personality correlates of white-collar crimes, James William Coleman’s sociological theory of corruption, and finally Cornish and Clark’s economic theory of white-collar crimes. In order to test the hypotheses extracted from the above mentioned theories, a representative sample of 120 prisoners of economic crimes currently incarcerated in Evin prison were selected. Since the present study is of a causal-comparative or quasi-experimental nature, a group of 120 managers currently active in Iranian corporations and official departments also responded to the research questionnaires. The logistic regression analysis accounted for 75 percent of the variance between the two groups. According to our analysis, despite enjoying a high level of religiosity and religious background, the economic criminals under the study have committed crimes. Moreover using a cost-benefit analysis before or during the crime commission, they (compared with the non-criminal group) had underestimated the probability of being caught and also that of certainty and severity of the punishments. Finally, they had committed crime according to their individual’s perception of the levels of criminal opportunity available in their workplace, an opportunity not to be missed out.