Despite all the attention paid to rogue companies like enron, academics know very little about the practicalities of white-
collar crime. the reason? there are no good data. 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. from who, exactly did the masters of enron steal? and how can you measure
something if you don't know to whom it happened, or with what frequency, or in what magnitude?
the excerpt the authors support their conclusion by