Street Crimes

The reason we see street crime as more harmful, is because of the way that we view the traditional criminal. It seems that traditionally we view a criminal by his intent. A murderer, even one who commits his crime in the heat of passion, intends to inflict harm on another. In contrast, a mine owner who commits safety violations which result in the deaths of his workers isn’t viewed as a criminal by the general populace, because his intent wasn’t to kill them. Perhaps he was cruel and negligent, but the general populace views him as nothing worse because his intent to harm wasn’t immediately apparent. Street crimes have traditionally been viewed by the entire population as criminal acts. These criminal practices such as personal theft, murder, and assault are cultural universals, in that every culture sees them as wrong. In contrast, many third world societies don’t even see white collar offenses as crimes, let alone serious ones. Their contention is that with the limited budget of the criminal justice system, studies should be done on how to prevent what we can all agree are crimes, rather than determining what is, in fact a crime, or focusing on evils that aren’t universally labeled as crimes. No matter the label associated with the crime, the cost of white collar crime is easily tangible. Although street crime often has much harsher penalties associated with it, experts have estimated that traditional street crime costs the public only 6 percent of what white collar crime does. The belief amongst the general population is that if their leaders in business and in government can commit crimes with impunity, then it must be morally acceptable for them to commit criminal acts as well.