Criminology

Criminology

• 2007 01 – Criminological Highlights, Volume 8, Number 4 – 12p
  • This issue of Criminological Highlights addresses the following questions:
    • 3. Would you buy life insurance after reading this paper?
      • 2006 – AP -The Institutionalization of Deceptive Sales in Life Insurance. Richard V. Ericson and Aaron Doyle, British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 46, Issue 6, p993-1010
    • p.4 – Deceptive sales practices in the life insurance business have become part of ‘normal business’: sales agents are taught by companies how to be deceptive and not get caught.
    • The easiest way for a large corporation to respond to allegations of fraud or dishonesty is to suggest that there are a few ‘bad apples’ in every organization, but that the company’s policies and practices are honest.
    • Life insurance companies, however, would have a hard time making this argument.
    • A practice, referred to in some locations as ‘misselling’ of insurance policies – “violating industry rules, guidelines and codes of ethics, if not the law” – occurs quite regularly. These practices involve “institutionally endorsed manipulation, deception and sometimes fraud” (p. 994).