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Private investigations and ethical orientations: a cause for concern?

Richard Kapend (Department of Policing, Criminology and Forensics, Faculty of Law Crime and Justice, University of Winchester, Winchester, UK)
Mark Button (Centre for Counter Fraud Studies, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK, and)
Peter Stiernstedt (Knowit, Oslo, Norway)

Journal of Financial Crime

ISSN: 1359-0790

Article publication date: 7 May 2024

62

Abstract

Purpose

A significant number of criminal and deviant acts are investigated by nonpolice actors. These include private investigators who charge fees for their services, professional services firms such as firms of accountants who also charge fees, in-house investigators employed by private organisations and in-house investigators of public sector organisations who are not sworn police officers. Some of these investigators, such as private investigators, have been exposed in unethical activities such as illegal surveillance and blagging to name some. In this respect, this study aims to uncover the ethical orientations of investigators using cluster analysis.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is based upon an online survey of private investigators predominantly in the UK, i.e. investigators beyond the public police. An innovate statistical inferential analysis was used to investigate the sample which resulted in the development of three ethical orientations of such investigators.

Findings

Based upon a survey response from 331 of these types of investigators this study illustrates the extent they engage in unethical activities, showing a very small minority of largely private investigators who engage in such activities.

Originality/value

A unique feature of this study is the use of an innovative statistical approach using an unsupervised machine learning model, namely, TwoStep cluster analysis, to successfully group and classify respondents based on their ethical orientation. The model derived three types of ethical orientation: ethical, inbetweeners and risk takers.

Keywords

Citation

Kapend, R., Button, M. and Stiernstedt, P. (2024), "Private investigations and ethical orientations: a cause for concern?", Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-02-2024-0066

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited

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