what gets defined as crime, and who gets surveilled and punished, generally has more to do with the politics of race and class than the harm that any particular behavior or activity causes. As Alec Karakatsanis observes in Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System, people with race and class privilege are generally shielded from criminal prosecution, even though their crimes often cause far greater harm than the crimes of the poor.
