Community service and white-collar offenders: The characteristics of the sanction on factors determining its use among a sample of health-care offenders

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to find out who in the white-collar offender field, specifically health-care professionals, is getting community service as a punishment and to lead the way for further research on community service as a legal sanction.

Design/methodology/approach

This study collected its sample using Medicaid Fraud Reports from the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units for 2009-2014. In total, 200 reports were used; 100 with community service given as a legal sanction, and 100 without. All the information was then coded by a set of criteria and put into an SPSS Statistics file for analysis.

Findings

The findings showed that there was no significant relationship between gender and any of the main legal sanctions looked for in the Medicaid Fraud Reports, except for community service. Community service also had a significant relationship with those offenders who committed physical crimes rather than financial crimes. Last, women were given less severe sanctions on average for all of the major sanctions given.

Research limitations/implications

One of the implications found was that a lot more women were given community service than men. This could be because women are considered homemakers for families, and the court systems do not want to punish a woman in a way that would take her away from her family. It could also be because the court system does not see a reason to punish women as harshly as it may be felt that a woman will learn her lesson with any punishment.

Originality/value

There is very little research done on community service as a sanction. This research helps bring that to light.

Citation

Supernor, H. (2017), "Community service and white-collar offenders: The characteristics of the sanction on factors determining its use among a sample of health-care offenders", Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 148-156. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-04-2016-0023