What is the difference between white-collar and street crime?

Karina C: What is the difference between white-collar and street crime?
Why is white-collar crime essentially ignored, while there is such a focus on street crime? Compare and contrast conflict and functional perspectives on this issue.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Justagirl
Street crime is usually violent. I don’t think they ignore white collar crime, there just isn’t anything spectacular about it. A white collar crime would be like insider trading, embezzlement etc and street crime would be mugging or rape…

Answer by newlookz
White-collars don’t use brute force, they are more intelligent as means of doing illegal crimes. Street crimes can be absolutely violent, also not caring if people know of their activity, they use fear to control.

Answer by Bob A
The basic difference is the absence of violence. White collar criminals may rob a banking institution through the internet with a computer, where a street criminal will produce a knife or gun and threaten the life of someone directly, in person. Which one is more dangerous?

Answer by Boogers
White collar crimes don’t hurt anyone physically. What are you taking a sociology test or something?

Answer by shelleydalyce
White-Collar Crime consists of occupational crime and corporate crime. Occupational crime refers to offenses committed against legitimate institutions (businesses or government) by those with “respectable” social status. It includes the embezzlement of corporate funds, tax evasion, computer crime and expense-account fraud. Corporate crime refers to offenses committed by legitimate institutions to further their own interests and includes conspiring to fix the prices of goods or services, the dumping of pollutants, the payment of kickbacks by manufacturers to retailers, misleading advertising, selling unsafe drugs, etc.

Street crime is a loose term for criminal offenses taking place in public places.
Crime on the streets of a city may include many other types of offenses, for example pickpocketing, the open carrying-on of the illegal drugs trade, prostitution in the form of soliciting outside the law, the creation of graffiti and vandalism of public property, and assaults. As a generic term street crime may include all of these, as well as offenses against private property such as the proverbial stealing of hub caps.

Answer by agua dulce
White-collar crimes are not being ignored; it’s a lot harder to detect (takes many man-hours to build a case around it). And they usually don’t involve deaths or serious bodily harm. In terms of priorities, police agencies are constrained to focus their meager resources on more violent crimes. Examples are street crimes which are more visible. There’s always a victim (or victims) who have been seriously hurt or fatally wounded. Thus, the need to solve such crimes (find the perpetrators) are given higher priority to prevent the criminals from doing the same crime again and again.