The law prosecuted lower-class crime while sparing refined upper-class spoliation

Evidence

‘Licensed prostitution, direct material theft, house-breaking, murder, brigandage for the lower classes; while skilful spoliation, indirect, refined theft, clever exploitation of human cattle, carefully planned and brilliantly executed betrayals, transcendent pieces of sharp practice in short, all the truly elegant vices and lucrative crimes which the law is far too polite to interrupt remain the monopoly of the upper classes’ — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 572

Categorization

• SEED: Could seed an article on how ‘white-collar crime’ enforcement gaps have roots in the nineteenth-century legal tolerance of elegant vices.
• XREF: connects to: Bourgeoisie aestheticized crime to mask their own practiced illegalities — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 435; Lower classes rejected penal justice and intervened physically at its public sites — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 117; Almost everyone breaks laws, so ‘criminal’ names a class not an act (+2 more)

Related

• Poorer classes would revolt to defend their tolerated illegalities (similarity 0.83)
• An underprivileged mob can create a lower class through sheer violence (similarity 0.83)
• Lower classes rejected penal justice and intervened physically at its public sites (similarity 0.81)
• Bourgeoisie aestheticized crime to mask their own practiced illegalities (similarity 0.81)
• Elite circles reframe as fashionable vice what the masses punish as crime. (similarity 0.81)
• Capitalism recast tolerated popular customs as criminal property theft (similarity 0.79)
• Popular illegality formed a continuum running from tolerated evasion to outright crime (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Almost everyone breaks laws, so ‘criminal’ names a class not an act #expands (0.85)
• Lower classes rejected penal justice and intervened physically at its public sites #complicates (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 117