A key fact of white-collar crime is that we hear about only the very slim fraction of people who are caught cheating. Most embezzlers lead quiet and theoretically happy lives; employees who steal company property are rarely detected.
With street crime, meanwhile, that is not the case. A mugging or a burglary or a murder is usually tallied whether or not the criminal is caught. A street crime has a victim, who typically reports the crime to the police, who generate data, which in turn generate thousands of academic papers by criminologists, sociologists, and economists. But white-collar crime presents no obvious victim.
In this excerpt, the authors present
a comparison between various criminals.
an argument in favor of reporting crime.
a contrast between different types of crime.
an argument against embezzlement.
