The starting opinion of the conversation is to recognize our country has an epidemic of corporate crime, abuse, and violence from which we all suffer. Its evident in the financial crash that cost our country 22 million, and the bp blowup and oil spill, worse environmental disaster in the nations history, and numerous food safety crises and disasters that killed dozens rue teenly, and the new england Compounding Pharmacy scandal, and washingplace safety and Health Issues that arise at workplaces across the country daily, and much more. You have to step back and say we as country dont do a very good job of dealing with these problems, and one marker is they persist over long periods of time. So we have an issue how we set the rules for what is permissible for corporations to do. When we say, no, you cant imperil human life you cant 2013 the environment you cant rip us off. We dont do a good job of setting the rules. The rules we have, we have to have some kind of enforcement system, inspectors to look at factories, make sure that the rules are being followed. Superrors look at the banks to make sure theyre following the rules. And turns out we dont do very good job at funding those positions and, the positionses that are funded the inspectors dont do enough, offer because they dont get enough support from the top. When we inspectors and examiners find problems, the issue is, what da we do with companies that have broken the law . Criminal some civil law . What do we do . Thats where renas book focuses, both on that question and making the argument that we should focus especially on that third question, because we have done such a poor job on the first two. If we focus on criminal sanctions we could overcome the limits and our inability to impose proper standards or corporate behavior. This is both a chronic problem and its a very acute problem. Todays New York Times has a story on the front page open binss, laws hinder prosecutor in charging gm employees them story says from factory floor to the corporation suprasuite, employees saw the ignition defect and failed to disclose in the problem to the get. Yet, even now, the prosecutors are closing in on a criminal case against the automaker, their amendment to, which villages has loop high school. The prosecutors struggles the oversight of carmakers according to the experts. Thats a good jump off point for rein narks what is going to complain about the problem and criticize the version of the story and say why the prosecutors should step up. Let me tone it over to rena steinzor, the author of wow why not jail a professor at the university of Washington Law School and long time, and now recently president for the center for reform. I really appreciate everybody coming. I see a lot of familiar faces, and thats makes me happy. I thank specially to rob who is doing a fabulous job leading an essential organization in really difficult times, and to russell, who really deserves a subscription to his newsletter, which is anything but dry and boring. And finally, the katherine jones, who greeted you at the door. She is the person that sort of set up the nuts and bolts of this event, and she is cprs secret weapon. So im very grateful to her. I have a simple agenda for my 20 minutes, and that is to convince you that criminal prosecution of corporate managers and corporations themselves in the worst health, safety, and environmental cases, should be among our top priorities, as a nation and as a community. We should work in a concerted and relentless way to promote those kinds of prosecutions. On some level you all agree that bad guys should go to jail. But our community as a whole does not spend much time, largely because we have been fighting blazing fires all over town, focusing on the solution, and i think it is one that has a lot of popular appeal and the potential to break through the regular la door gridlock we find ourselves enmeshed in my firs argument is a matter of ethical politics or political ethics. Sounds pretty professorial. And as rob mentioned we have a longstanding neglect of White Collar Crime in this country. It is extraordinarily acute. We do manage on some level to fight everyday cases us of fraud and embezzlement, even at the state level. But at the federal level, there has been a shocking neglect of these kinds of cases. As we begin to talk about the critical issue of mass incarceration, which is the sort of outcome of all of the terrible things that have been happening in our cities, to people of color, i think its very important that we also raise the other side of it, which is that the Justice System some would say the inJustice System in this country, is very, very good at throwing poor people of color in jail, and very, very bad about policing rich Corporate Executives and managers who are so reckless and so grossly negligent that people die, in the workplace, as consumers, and we suffer irrevocable damage to the environment, and that im thinking of go old bp. That was a amazing scuff scoff law for ten years and was rapped on the knuckles many times until its final act was so sensational. And even now the company is saying were coming back, our stock price is back, not to worry. So neglect of White Collar Crime reflects a discrimination between two classes of people in a very unfair way, but it also flouts the ultimate goals of the criminal Justice System. Lockstanding belief that criminal prosecutions are good because they punish people, they deter crime, and nothing can deter crime more effectively than having the fbi or state police at your door to interview you as a potential target, and crime should reflect the values of our communities. So what do we know about the values of our community . As rob also mentioned, we have great indications that the American People are absolutely disgusted by the failure to prosecute the banks for what happened in 2008. Polling sponsored by the baumann foundation, which is one of the cosponsors of this event, gary bass is here. Many of you know him. Shows beyond a doubt that people think enforcement is too weak and it needs to be emphasized in appropriate cases, and there are other polls that show that people are very puzzled. They understand why street crime, violent street crime, has been a priority. I dont think they realize how many people are locked up for nonViolent Crimes. But they dont understand why bankers have seemingly walked free. Just a few days oak there was a story about the london whale, the guy that rigged the critical statement of banking Interest Rates and it said he was not going to be prosecuted. It was too complicated. They couldnt figure out what to do about it. Sends a message. So, its also true that the double standard is starting to make local news, and now ill tell you something that if you hadnt heard about it, ore going to be surprised. There were cases where drivers of defective cars that had fatal crashes one was a toyota and one was a gm car were themselves prosecuted for crimes. Prosecuted for reckless driving. And one guy got an eightyear jail term and served two years. Actually served two years, until toyota said, we think that car was having a sudden acceleration problem. So, we have a circumstance where large automakers have a fatal defect the cover over for year and then sign huge settlements with the government in the meantime, the average consumer who bought this car in completely good faith, has his conduct criminalized because the defective car causes an accident. Its really disgusting. Id like to move to more pragmatic arguments. I think this is something i say in the book may be controversial. I would really like to hear what you think about it. But my argument is that we need a completely different approach to the harm that is being caused because Government Agencies are on their back foot. There is rampant regulatory dysfunction because they are underfunded, grossly underfunded. They have laws that are out dated, and no chance of having them updated. As an example, you get a heavier penalty if you harass a wild bur roe burro than if you kill a worker. Laws are outdated. And finally the bureaucrats are Civil Servants are kicked upside the head every other minute by the endless drum beat of republicans, consecutives who are consistently on message and want to convince us that everybody in the government is incompetent, and mall mall live lent, even. The agencies dont feel luke they have a lot of backing epa cut its enforcement. Slashed it. One of the first things to go to sort of balance the budget and that is extremely important. If i were over there. Ha. That would be one of my things i would not touch until the very last minute. So, we have agencies that are single issue, epa is working on climate change, not on much else, unfortunately. Osha seems to have abandoned all rulemaking. The fda has been virtually defundedded on food safety. They dont have the now implement the new law there have been several stories about that, again just in the last couple of weeks. And nhtsa was absolutely looked as if it couldnt muster itself to even understand what was going on with some of these more sophisticated problems. It took actually plaintiffs lawyers thank you, plaintiff lawyers to discover that the ignition switch had actually been changed out in 2005, but gm had kept its secret so all the people who has cobalts were driving around with what they knew was a dangerous switch. So, bottom line is, too many companies, large and small, are gallupping across the tundra, causing grave damage without any fear of being caught or prosecuted, and this is a bad situation. Really something that we need a new approach to address and to really change, and if we go up to capitol hill, theres so many veteran lobbyists here i see going up to capitol hill and saying, will you please other give the agencies more momentum. You know what kind of reaction that gets. So, its not going to get better anytime soon, and the if we can find a way to advocate for really very sharp remedy, remedy that is appropriately harsh, in the right cases, i think it will have a lot of resonance with people who have a perception that the government is not protecting them, and that companies are only about the bottom line and really dont care about their customers. So, my third argument is that we can make big progress here because changes and reach has already started, and with that i rob mentioned some of these but i want to just point out for people who may not have followed it. No reason that you should. Im obsessed. Doesnt mean you have to be. The the whole point. One of the debt that there have been six notable prosecutions in five states that show at least that at least federal prosecutors are beginning to become far more aggressive on health and safety. Just to mention them, the bp company men who were in charge of the rig before the blowout, and made an absolutely puzzling, extraordinarily unusual and bad decision, about a test result that they got in, without consulting with any of the engineers on shore, have been charged and will go to trial in the fall. At the Peanut Corporation of america, which shipped out peanut paste with salmonella, killed nine, made hundreds sick, they had been convicted of felonies and will be sentenced on september 21st. New England Compounding Center has been charged with racketeering, the core offense is Second Degree murder of the 64 people who received these injections, got meningitis and died. Theres, by the way, 741 people who are still struggling with the aftermath of the disease. Its a situation you wouldnt wish on your worst enemy. The pharmacist, who of them have been charged with deliberately ignoring tests that showed that the clean rooms at the facility were infested with bacteria and fungus, who didnt do routine tests that are very clear in widely recognized industrywritten standards. This wasnt even something that the fda put out. Who were sending out medicine when they were only supposed to send it out to specific patients thats what compounding is you mix it for a specific patient they were sending it out to lists of names that included mickey mouse and jesus christ. And they will go to trial, its predicted, in april. Massey energy, which sponsored the Upper Big Branch mine collapse that killed 29 miners, the worth tragedy in decades, the ceo, don blankenship, to great cheering in West Virginia, despite the concern that the socalled war on coal is going to destroy all these jobs, people were calling every day, the u. S. Attorneys office, asking if he was going to indict blankenship. He finally did. If you read the indictment, youll be amazed at the kind of things the man was saying in writing, and is even more interesting that his Senior Executives kept all the notes. He was saying things like we dont have time to Pay Attention to safety. We need to dig coal. And was getting production reports every 30 minutes from the executive. Freedom industries, the people that ran the tank farm that had the leak that put the unpronounceable chemical that has never been tested, into the charleston water supply, again in West Virginia, have been charged and several of them have pled guilty. The jensen brothers, perhaps the most sympathetic because they had a really smart lawyer. Sold cantaloupe infest evidence with listeria. They met guilty but didnt serve any jail time. But still those two food prosecutions have convinced the industry, thank goodness, because were not implementing a food safety modernization act that if you hurt people, people get sick off the food that you send out, you can face criminal charges. Theres some common characteristics here. I just want to run through them quickly because my ultimate goal is to make these kinds of behaviors a component of the guilty mind you need to have to be prosecuted for a crime. Theyre very widespread you. See them when you look deeply into all of these incidents, and there have been thousands of pages of very detailed, very careful, very objective reports, have been written about each incident. You look into them, you can gather a few threads in your hands. First of all, everyone had. A ample washing they were doing something wrong because the regulators were ineffectually buzzing around them. Massey energy, the mine Upper Big Branch mine, was evacuated three times in the two weeks leading up the explosion that killed the 29 men. They had hundreds of violations pending for the exact practices that caused the explosion, and yet they persisted. They would not correct them. They appealed them and put them off. There is a relentless and irrational demand that people work harder and work faster. Texas city refinery, which was under george w. Bush, 15 people killed. The workers that were in charge of the unit that caused the explosion had been working 12hour shifts for 29 straight days. This is very common. Stovepipe management that has different responsibilities assigned. Im actually not sure if its deliberate but very effective. So nobody knows the whole picture. Closely related to that, a system that discourages reporting any bad news. So, at the mine, when people would say, the miners would say, the ventilation system isnt working, they would be told that they had kids, they needed to feed, and why dont they be quiet or they wouldnt be around the job much longer. The normalization of deviance is another, very common thread. This is when people see that systems are failing, that there are problems, that there are near misses, mounting up, and yet they rationalize it. They say these risks are really not that serious. We can accommodate this. As long as were aware of it, its going to be okay. And they talk themselves into this kind of group think that is blind to what the ramifications are. What could happen. So, one last one is elaborate paper tigers. Big corporations have reames of papers, map alls, directives, things put on the lunchroom bulletin board, and theres so much of it and it is ignored. Nobody is aware of it. Nobody reads it, and theres no system enforcing it. Its not done in a way that the average blue Collar Worker can understand. So, thats very ambitious, by the way, for me to say. If i were to if there other professors of criminal law here, they would be falling off their chairs at the idea that this kind of behavior should demonstrate mens rea, and that was guilty mind, and that is largely part of the problem, because there is this kind of refusal to say that when circumstances get worse and worse and worse and becomes clearer and clearer that something dangerous is going on the only people that are considered responsible are the ones standing there five minutes before the accident occurs. And there is plenty of room in the law, as i explain it, excessive length in the book, for making the argument when you create these circumstances, the chain of causation goes back weeks, months and that those poem are equally responsible if they are willfully blind and reckless and ignore what has happened and what the risks are. Now, i will also say and this is something that my colleagues would also many of them would laugh about is we dont need new laws. Were not going to get them. Thats sort of a problem. But we dont need them. Existing law has room for creative prosecutors, for daring prosecutors, to bring these kinds of cases, and be successful. We were talking before about prosecutors and why theyre afraid to bring creative cases, and part of the reason is that they absolutely hate to lose. If you talk to any of them, they will admit this at their first point out of the block. The other problem is that there isnt anybody yet really progression them in a concerted way to make charges, supporting them to do it. Sometimes a prosecutor see the lying about this kind of thing. One example is last week the new York Attorney general announced he was going to prosecute the owners of a papa johns chain that had stolen employees wages they had literally appropriated what they were supposed to be paying their line workers, made their taxes fraudulent to cover up what was going on, and he was going to bring criminal charges, and standing by his side was the head of the wage and Hour Division of the department of labor. And it was a wonderful example of the kind of partnership that can go on between stat