Friedrichs says the reasons are complex, but one reason is that there is no broad-based social movement against corporate crime. But there was no broad-based popular social movement. Another reason is the fact that corporate crime is more complex and in some ways more difficult to understand than street crime. There are exceptions-the Exxon Valdez oil spill, for example. But it is much more complex, frustrating and expensive to have reporters investigate and report on these kinds of activities than on street crime, he points out.
Serial killers cause dreadful harm to a limited number of people.
But they do not represent a major threat to the society as a whole. They do not cause, over time, the kind of harm that corporations cause. One major reason why corporate crime gets little attention from reporters, academics and government officials has little to do with complexity, and more to do with the simple reality of corporate power. Big corporations have marinated our formerly independent institutions in corporate cash and influence. The idea of corporate crime is one that is simply unappealing to business elites,'' she says.