Corporate criminals constructing white-collar crime: or why there is no corporate crime on the USA Network’s White Collar series

A standard critique of media portrayals of crime correctly states that there is an over-emphasis on street crime compared to white-collar crime, especially given the prevalence and enormous costs of the latter. This situation partly reflects the pattern of legislators and enforcement agencies focusing more on harms done by the poor (street crime) than harms done by the rich (white-collar crime), but the media further magnify the carnival mirror-like distortions of the criminal law and criminal justice system (Reiman and Leighton 2013). COPS, all the varieties of Law & Order, CSI, etc. hardly ever deal with a white-collar crime. Occasionally, rich people kill, but not through corporate acts that harm workers, consumers, the environment and/or communities.