数据显示这种转向的规模。2001 年 9 月 11 日袭击前夕，约有 1,700 名 FBI 探员负责白领犯罪；到 2008 年金融危机时，这一数字减少 625 名，即约 36%。次级抵押贷款丑闻使美国家庭损失估计 19 兆至 22 兆美元财富，约合 17.5 兆至 20.3 兆欧元，涵盖房地产、股票与退休储蓄，而数百万人失去住房。尽管 Barack Obama 时期起诉了数百名相关个人，大型金融公司及其高阶主管大致毫发无伤，而数十亿美元罚款相对于其单季利润仍属微小。
作者将责任不足部分归因于 2000 年代初以来广泛使用的延后起诉协议与不起诉协议，这些机制把主要被告从高阶主管转为公司本身，并依赖企业内部调查。她认为，监督薄弱与违约惩罚稀少削弱了司法。这一模式在 Trump 第二任期第一年更加恶化：据 Public Citizen 称，2025 年政府取消了自 Biden 政府承接、针对 153 家涉嫌违法公司的 145 项联邦执法行动，其中 31 家公司曾为 Trump 的就职活动或新的 White House ballroom 捐款。文章最后警告，事实上的起诉豁免正在侵蚀政府信任与美国民主。
The article argues that US leniency toward white-collar crime is a long bipartisan trend that is accelerating under Donald Trump. Since the 1980s, state and federal prosecutors have sent record numbers of people to prison for violent, property, and drug crimes while retreating from prosecuting and punishing white-collar crime despite extensive elite wrongdoing. The author contends that, beginning with the Clinton administration, the limited regulatory guardrails built after the savings-and-loan and junk-bond crises were dismantled, deepening the decriminalization of corporate crime.
The scale of that shift is numerical. On the eve of the September 11, 2001 attacks, about 1,700 FBI agents investigated white-collar crime; by the 2008 financial crisis, that total had fallen by 625, or about 36%. The subprime mortgage scandal cost US households an estimated $19 trillion to $22 trillion in wealth, including real estate, stocks, and retirement savings, and millions lost their homes. Although the Obama Justice Department prosecuted hundreds of individuals tied to the mortgage and foreclosure crises, major financial firms and senior executives largely escaped, while multibillion-dollar fines remained small relative to quarterly profits.
The author partly attributes weak accountability to the widespread use of deferred prosecution agreements and nonprosecution agreements since the early 2000s, which shifted the main defendants from executives to corporations and relied heavily on internal corporate investigations. She argues that weak monitoring and rare penalties for violations undercut justice. The pattern worsened in Trump’s first year of his second term: according to Public Citizen, in 2025 the administration canceled 145 inherited federal enforcement actions against 153 companies, and 31 of those companies had donated to Trump’s inauguration or the new White House ballroom. The article concludes that de facto immunity from prosecution is corroding trust in government and US democracy.