Contemporary liberal commentary on the official response to conventional crime condemns retributivism, harsher sentences, and greater investments in police and prisons. Rather, the governing discourse is that of crime prevention, based on the argument that upstream social investments will obviate the needs for the use of costly criminal justice expenditures after the offense has occurred. At the same time, criminologists' responses to white-collar crime have tended to be relatively vengeful and unforgiving. They often call for strict regulatory regimes, accompanied by penalties for noncompliance, often draconian penalties in cases that involve significant harm to the public. This contradiction, however, has begun to fade under the influence of the increasing realization that the capacity of the state to control both individual and corporate behavior has its limits. The justifiable limits of state control requires that private institutions cooperate with the state in the furtherance of law enforcement and regulatory objectives. A corporate social control industry has emerged to complement government regulatory agencies. In the domain of white-collar crime there appears to be abundant opportunities for analogs of third-party policing and community-based policing. 2 figures, 3 notes, and 44 references