Interesting that you bring up white collar crime. One change in our country that I have noticed is that these days everyone from the judges to the man on the street seem to have a permissive attitude toward white collar crime. Everybody wants to lynch beggars who steal a few hundred dollars of copper pipe from an abandoned building scheduled to be demolished, but steal hundreds of hard working people's retirements and no one bats an eyelash.
I think there are about three reasons for this
-I'm not sure that many people can honestly
understand some of the white collar crimes and may view them as
victim-less crimes. A street crime is pretty simple to understand and involves the taking of a physical object People have short attention spans.
A crude ponzi acheme is easy to understand and there are identifiable victims. Harder to get people to see insider trading or junk bond fraud as clear outright crimes.
-Class.
White collar crimes are associated with well educated and wealthy people..street crimes associated with poor and uneducated people. People aspire to be wealthy and think that relating to the wealthy somehow helps them.(Mental placebo)
