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The victims Violent Crime may have decreased but the victims of non-violent (white-collar) crimes may have actually increased. How many people were "victimized

The victims Violent Crime may have decreased but the victims of non-violent (white-collar) crimes may have actually increased. How many people were "victimized" in the recent Financial crisis? How about the spate of people in asset forfeiture by the police just for being in the wrong place? How many victims of recent Credit card breaches? These stats might accurately reflect that the US is moving from an industrial to a post-industrial information & services economy - the criminals are correspondingly adapting to where the real money is.

AnthonyMouse 12y ago
> The victims Violent Crime may have decreased but the victims of non-violent (white-collar) crimes may have actually increased. This is an extremely important point. The way you fight white collar crime is comprehensively different than the way you fight violent crime. BearCats and SWAT teams are utterly useless. Traditional law enforcement in general just doesn't work. You can't deter systemic risk with post facto sentencing. If the criminals live in a non-extradition country then obtaining evidence against them is pointless. What is necessary is to help victims to not be victims rather than trying to apprehend the perpetrators after the fact. The problem is we put the FBI and DoJ in charge of it rather than the National Science Foundation. We would do well to take half the DoJ's budget and put it into grants for computer security research, free security audits for popular software and libraries and UX improvements for the likes of PGP.