The contemporary securitarian right tends to build its political narrative around street crime: burglary, muggings, robbery, illegal occupation of property, and urban disorder. This is not merely a matter of criminal justice policy; it is a specific way of constructing a public problem. As Michel Foucault argued, power does not simply repress crime—it selects which forms of illegality should be made visible and which should be tolerated, managed, or relegated to the background. Criminal law does not pursue every form of illegality with the same intensity; rather, it establishes a hierarchy of offenses that reflects the political and economic equilibrium of a given society.
This hierarchy is not produced by state institutions alone. It is also the outcome of a cultural process. Antonio Gramsci described hegemony as the capacity of a ruling bloc to present its worldview as natural, universal, and consistent with common sense. From this perspective, public security is not simply a government policy but a powerful narrative that shapes how society identifies threats. When political debate focuses overwhelmingly on street crime, citizens are encouraged to perceive the pickpocket, burglar, or mugger as the primary danger, while more complex and systemic forms of criminality fade into the background of public consciousness.
Organized crime presents a striking paradox. Although its economic, political, and institutional impact is vastly greater than that of petty crime, it often generates less public anxiety. Criminal organizations typically avoid indiscriminate violence, preferring instead to infiltrate legitimate businesses, public procurement, financial markets, real estate, and money-laundering networks. Their strength lies precisely in their ability to become invisible, blending illicit capital into legal economic circuits.
Diego Gambetta famously argued that the mafia is not merely a criminal organization but a business that supplies private protection where trust and the rule of law are weak. In this sense, organized crime does not exist outside capitalism; it exploits capitalism's contradictions, operating within its grey areas and establishing mutually beneficial relationships with actors fully integrated into the legal economy.
David Garland, in turn, described contemporary societies as characterized by a "culture of control," in which security functions not only as a practical necessity but also as a symbolic political resource. Crime becomes a powerful instrument of political mobilization. Yet this culture focuses primarily on offenses that provoke immediate fear and emotional reactions. Financial crime, systemic corruption, corporate fraud, and money laundering, despite causing far greater economic and social damage, remain less visible and therefore less effective as instruments for generating political consensus.
Loïc Wacquant interprets this development as part of the broader transformation of the modern state. As governments retreat from social welfare, they increasingly reinforce their penal function, making public security a central source of political legitimacy. The policing of urban marginality therefore acquires a symbolic dimension: it reassures the electorate by projecting the image of a strong and active state, even when the structural causes of crime remain largely unaddressed.
From a Gramscian perspective, security itself becomes a mechanism of cultural hegemony. Political consent is secured not only through coercion but also by shaping what society considers urgent, dangerous, and morally unacceptable. The fight against street crime becomes a powerful marker of political identity, while economic and financial criminality—precisely because it is less visible and often intertwined with elite interests—struggles to occupy the center of public debate.
This does not imply that conservative governments deliberately ignore organized crime. Law enforcement agencies and the judiciary continue to devote substantial resources to combating criminal organizations. The point is rather that public discourse often privileges street crime because it generates an immediate perception of insecurity. A burglary, a mugging, or a robbery directly affects everyday life and transforms people's relationship with public space. A sophisticated international money-laundering scheme, by contrast, may move billions of dollars and distort entire sectors of the economy while remaining largely invisible to ordinary citizens.
The result is a profound asymmetry of perception: the crimes that generate the greatest public fear are not necessarily those that inflict the greatest social harm. Legal and illegal economies are not isolated universes but interconnected systems through which capital, interests, and influence constantly flow. Through money laundering, shell companies, offshore financial structures, and apparently legitimate investments, criminal wealth can be absorbed into the global economy, making the boundary between lawful and unlawful capital increasingly difficult to distinguish.
Following the 2008 global financial crisis, several magistrates, financial investigators, and international observers suggested that the enormous liquidity held by transnational criminal organizations may, in some contexts, have found its way into parts of the financial system facing severe liquidity shortages. While this remains a debated hypothesis rather than an established explanation of the crisis itself, it points to a broader structural issue: contemporary capitalism and organized crime are not always opposing spheres. Under certain conditions, they may develop relationships of interdependence, convenience, and mutual functionality.
From this perspective, security becomes both a technology of government and an instrument of cultural hegemony. It does more than organize the repression of crime; it determines which fears are considered legitimate and which forms of illegality deserve sustained political and media attention. The distinction between street crime and white-collar crime is therefore not merely legal but profoundly political. The former produces visible insecurity; the latter undermines markets, institutions, and democratic governance itself. Yet it is street crime that dominates political rhetoric because fear remains one of the most effective mechanisms for building political consent.
Ultimately, the hierarchy of crime does not necessarily reflect the objective gravity of different offenses. Rather, it reflects the ways in which power constructs cultural hegemony by deciding which forms of illegality should be seen, feared, and punished—and which should remain largely invisible despite their far-reaching consequences.
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