You know the statistic. We incarcerate a higher proportion of the population than any other country does. Russia and South Africa rank respectively second and third.

Hundreds of thousands of young, now aging, men, are doing hard time for possession of small amounts of drugs. More and more people find themselves in jail because they got caught with bench warrants for their arrest for exorbitant fines they could not afford to pay. More than a century after debtors prisons were abolished, thousands are again behind bars because of debts.

But one category of felon is free on the street. I refer, of course, to corporate criminals.

Consider the case of a checkout clerk at Walmart who puts her hands in the till and walks off with a couple of hundred bucks of the company’s money. That clerk could expect to face prosecution and jail.

Now consider her boss, who cheats her of hundreds of dollars of pay by failing to accurately record the time she clocked in, or the overtime she worked. Maybe, just maybe, after the worker risks her job to complain, she might get back wages. In rare cases, the company might even pay a fine.

Every year, workers are cheated out of tens of billions of dollars of pay—more than larceny, robbery and burglary combined. Until the incomparable Kim Bobo gave the practice its rightful name, wage theft, most people didn’t equate cheating workers of their rightful pay with simple thievery.

Even so, no boss ever goes to jail. But tell me, what’s the difference between a clerk putting her hands in the till and the boss putting his hands on her paycheck?