Some risks do not fully reveal themselves. What I mean is that while the harm may be visible in some instances and invisible in others, the bulk of the problem is hidden and therefore the underlying scope of the problem may not be fully understood.

Harms are invisible for several different reasons. Some are invisible by design, as is often the case with sophisticated white-collar crimes such as fraud, embezzlement, and corruption. Perpetrators take steps to understand and then deliberately circumnavigate detection systems. From the perpetrator's point of view, the best schemes of this type are those that are not only invisible to authorities at the time of commission, but remain invisible in perpetuity.

Some harms — such as within-the-family crimes like sexual abuse, incest, and domestic violence — are invisible because victims and witnesses are reluctant, unable, or otherwise unlikely to report what they know. Similarly with rape, and date-rape in particular, which tend to have very low reporting rates. Blackmail is often not reported because victims fear the consequences for their own reputations. Crimes involving intimidation, such as extortion, go largely unreported. Another set of crimes, termed consensual crimes, are generally not reported because all the participants take part by choice, at least to some extent. These include drug-dealing, conspiracies, gambling, prostitution, and some forms of cooperative corruption such as bribery and nepotism.