General Strain Theory as a Vehicle to Analyze Insider Threat

The declared ambition of a number of countries to develop and establish civilian nuclear-power programs requires us to examine insider-threat issues regarding these countries. While the U.S. business and nuclear communities have accumulated a significant amount of knowledge on the insider threat and measures to prevent and mitigate the consequences of an insider attack, it is not obvious that this knowledge can be fully applied to nonwestern societies. Thus, an examination of theoretical work on white-collar crime and the insider threat was conducted as well as a study on the specifics of white- collar crime and the insider threat. Despite the wealth of theories available, none of them has been applied directly to insider crime in nuclear facilities. In fact, few of them have even come close to correlating and explaining the risk factors that have been found to predict who will commit an insider attack and why. The small handful of theories that come closest to explaining insider behavior becomes even smaller when their level of academic support, empirical evidence, and generalizability are considered. Agnew’s general strain theory has the highest level of correlation for this type of crime and provides a strong framework of explanation and prediction factors. Empirical evidence found by numerous researchers has also confirmed the main hypotheses of general strain theory, including evidence that it can be generalized widely in places outside the US, such as Italy, China, Korea, and the Philippines. The paper will explore the Agnew General Strain theory and its implications to insider threat.