Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Why Not Jail 20240

Everybody, thanks for joining us, i am robert weissman, president of Public Citizens. We are here for a conversation about Rena Steinzors nuke wonderful book why not jail industrial companies, corporate malfeasance, and government inactio inaction, Rena Steinzor will speak for about half an hour and then Russel Mokhiber and i will talk about Rena Steinzors book and her remarks and we will open it up for discussion. The first step before we dive in, the starting point of the conversation is to recognize our country has an epidemic of corporate crime, abuse, and violence which we all suffer. Is evident in the financial crash that cost our country 22 million, above bp oil spill, worst environmental disaster in the nations history arguably, numerous food safety crises and disasters to kill dozens routinely, new england, pounding pharmacy scandal, Workplace Safety and health issues, work places across the country on a daily basis and much more and you have to step back and say we as a country dont do a good job dealing with these problems. One marker of that is they persist over long periods of time. We have an issue about how we set the rules for what is permissible for corporations to do when we say no, you cant compare a human life, you cant threaten the environment, you cant rip us off. We dont do good job setting those rules but the rules we do have we have to have some enforcement system, we have to have inspectors look at factories, make sure the rules are being followed, supervisors look at banks and make sure they are following the rules, it turns out we dont do a good job funding those positions and the positions that are funded a lot of times the inspectors dont do as good a job as they could. Often they dont get enough support from the top. When we do find violations, when inspectors and examiners line problems the issue is what do we do with companies that have broken the law, they have broken civil and criminal law, what do we do . That is where Rena Steinzor focuses, both on that question and making the argument that we should focus especially on the third question because we have done such a poor job on the first two. We focus and criminal sanctions we could overcome the limit in our inability to impose proper standards on corporate behavior. This is both a chronic problem and not very accused problem. Todays New York Times has a story and on the front page of the business section, laundering prosecutors but the opening of the story says from the factory floor to the corporate Suite Employees at general motors, indications of a deadly ignition defense and failed to disclose the problem to the government yet even now as prosecutors are closing in on a criminal case against the automaker their efforts to charge individual employees at the center of the case has hit an obstacle. Legal loopholes the Auto Industry itself helped to create. Prosecutor struggle centers on hide legal standards and gas, oversight of carmakers according to experts who understand what is going on with the but investigation. I think that is a good joy because of point for Rena Steinzor. We complain about that problem and criticize that version of the story and say prosecutors should step up even with improper loss. We turn it over to Rena Steinzor, the author of this excellent new book why not jail industrial companies, corporate malfeasance, and government inaction. The professor at university of Maryland Law School and long time and recently passed president of the center for progressive reform. The floor is yours. I really appreciate everybody coming. I see a lot of familiar faces and that makes me happy. My thanks especially to rob who is doing a fabulous job beating an essential organization in really difficult times and to russell, who really deserves a description to his newsletter which is anything but dry and boring and finally Katherine Jones who greeted you at the door, she is the person that set up the nuts and bolts of this event. I am 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 the community. We should work in a concerted and relentless way to promote those kinds of prosecutions. On some level you all agreed 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 that solution and i think it is one that has a lot of popular appeal and also has potential to break through the regulatory gridlock we find ourselves enmeshed in. So my first argument is a matter of ethical politics with political ethics. Sounds so real, doesnt it . We have a longstanding neglect of whitecollar crime in this country. It is extraordinarily acute. We do manage on some level to fight everyday cases 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 and as we begin to talk about the critical issue of mass incarceration which is less sort of outcome of all the terrible things that have been happening in our cities to people of color i think it is important that we also raise the other side of this which is that the justice system, some would say the in justice system, in this country is very very good at throwing poor people of color in a jail and very very bad about policing rich Corporate Executives and managers who are so reckless and so grossly negligent that people died in the workplace, as consumers, and we separate irrevocable damage to the environment and i am thinking of good old bp, an amazing scuffle, for ten years and was wrapped on the knuckles many times until its final act was so sensational and even now the company is saying were coming back, stock prices back, not to worry. So neglect of whitecollar crime not only reflects the difference, discrimination between two classes of people in a very unfair way but it also faults the ultimate goals of the criminal justice system, longstanding belief that criminal prosecutions are good because they punish people, the term crime and in the white collar area nothing will deter crime more effectively even having the fbi or state police show up at your door to interview you as a potential target, and crime should reflect the values of our community. 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. Pulling sponsored by the bowman 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 week and it needs to be emphasized inappropriate cases and there are other polls that show people are very puzzled. They understand why 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 ago there was a story about london whale, the guy who read the libor critical statement of banking Interest Rates and it said he was not going to be prosecuted, it is too complicated, they couldnt figure out what to do about it. Sends a message. It is also true that the double standard is starting to make local news and i will tell you something if you havent heard about it you will be pretty 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, they were prosecuted for reckless driving. And one guy got a eight year jail term and served two years, actually served two years and told toyota said we think that car was having a sudden acceleration problem. We have a circumstance where a large automakers have a fatal defect that they cover over for years, and then they signed huge settlements with the government but in the meantime the average consumer who bought this, are in complete good faith has his conduct criminalize because the detective car causes an accident. Really disgusting. And would like to move to more pragmatic arguments. I thing, and this is something i say in the boat. May be controversial. I would like to hear what you think about it. 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, a have laws that are outdated and no chance having some updated. As an example, you get a heavier penalty if you arrest the wild borough in a state park, and i have citations for this, that if you kill a worker through gross negligence. Trump talks about this all the time and is absolutely wright. Laws are outdated and finally the bureaucrats are kicked upside the head every other minute by the endless drum beat of republicans, conservatives who are consistently on message and want to convince us that everybody in the government is incompetent and malevolent. The agencies dont feel like they have a lot of backing and they have, epa cut its enforcement. It was one of the first things to go to sort of balance the budget and that is extremely important. If i were over there. That would be one of the things that i would not touch until the very last minute. 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 defunded on food safety. They dont have the money to implement the new laws. There have conservators about that in the last couple weeks and now its the ones absolutely looked as if it couldnt muster a itself to even understand what was going on with some of the more sophisticated problems. It took actually plaintiffs thank you, plaintiffs lawyers to discover that the ignition switch had been changed out in 2005. The gm had kept it a secret so all the people with cobol from earlier years for driving around with what they knew was a dangerous switch. Bottom line, too many companies, large and small, galloping across the tundra causing grave damage without any fear of being caught or prosecuted, and this is a bad situation, really something the we need a new approach to address and to really change and if we go up to capitol hill, there are many veteran lobbyists year i see, going up to capitol hill and saying please give the agencys more money, you know what kind of reaction that gets. It is not going to get better anytime soon. If we confined away to advocate for the meet the 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 dont care about their customers. My third argument is that we can make big progress here because changes already started. And with that, robert mentioned some of these but i want to point out for people who may not have followed it, no reason that you should. I am obsessed, doesnt mean you have to be. That is the whole point. That there have been six notable prosecutions in five states that show at least federal prosecutors are beginning to become far more aggressive on health and safety. Just to mentioned them, the bp company men who were in charge of the rig before the block ought and made an absolutely extraordinarily unusual land bad decision about test results 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 corp. Of america which shipped out peanut paste with salmonella, killed nine, made hundreds sick, they have been convicted of felonies and will be sentenced on september 21st. New england, counting 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. There are by the way 741 people still struggling with the aftermath. A situation you wouldnt wish on your worst enemy. The pharmacist, two of them have been charged with deliberately ignoring tests that showed that the clean rooms at the facility were invested with bacteria and fungus, who didnt do routine tests that are very clear, and widely recognized, industry written standards, this wasnt even something the fda put out but were sending out medicine when they were only supposed to send it out it specific patients, that is what compounding is, mix it for specific patient, they yet out to lists of names that included mickey mouse and jesus christ and they will go to trial, it is predicted, in april. The Upper Big Branch mine collapse that killed 29 miners, the worst tragedy in decades, the ceo, don blankenship, to great cheering in West Virginia despite the concerns the socalled war on coal was going to destroy all these jobs, people were calling every day in the u. S. Attorneys Office Asking if he was going to be indicted, he finally did, if you read the indictment you will be amazed at the kind of things the man was saying in writing and even more interesting that his Senior Executives kept all the nodes. 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 executives. Freedom industries, the people but ran the tank farm that had the leak that put the unpronounceable chemical that has never been tested in to the charleston water supply again in West Virginia have been charged and several have pled guilty. The jensen brothers, perhaps the most sympathetic because they had a really smart lawyer, sold cantaloupe infected with listeria, they pled guilty but didnt serve any jail time, but still the two food prosecutions have convinced the industry think goodness because we are not implementing food safety modernization act, the if you hurt people, people get sick of of the food you send out, you can face criminal charges. There are common characteristics i want to run through quickly because my ultimate goal is to make these behaviors a component of a guilty mind you need to have to be prosecuted for ups crime. You see them when you look deeply into all of these incidents and there have been thousands of pages of very detailed, careful, objective reports have been written about each incident. You look into them you can gather a few threads in your hand. First of all, everyone had ample warning they were doing something wrong because the regulators were in effect joy will be buzzing around from. Beat mine, Upper Big Branch mine was evacuated three times in the two weeks leading up to 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 appeal to them. Put them off. There is the relentless and irrational demand that people work harder and work faster. Texas city refinery under george w. Bush, 15 people killed, the workers in charge of the unit that cause the explosion had been working 12 hour shifts for 29 straight days. This is very common. Stovepipe management which had different responsibilities assigned, and i am actually not sure if it is deliberate but it is very effective. Nobody knows all whole picture. Closely related to that, a system that discourages reporting any bad news so at the mine when people would say, miners would say the ventilation system isnt working would be told that they had kids, they needed to feed, why dont they be quiet or there wouldnt be around job much longer. The normalization of deviance is another very common thread. This is when people see the systems are failing, that there are problems, near misses mounting up and yet they rationalize it. They say these risks are really not that serious, we can accommodate fiske, as long as we are aware of it is going to be okay and they talk themselves into a kind of groups think that is blind to the ramifications. What could happen. One last one is elaborate paper tigers. Big corporations have reams of papers, manuals, directives, things put on the lunchroom bulletin board, and so much of it and it is begin award. Nobody is aware of it, nobody reads it and there is no system for enforcing it. It is not done in a way that the average bluecollar worker can understand. That is very ambitious by the way for me to say. If i were to, if there were other professors of criminal law here is they would be falling off their chairs at the idea that this kind of behavior should demonstrate mens ray at, that was guilty mind, and that is largely a part of the problem. Because theres this kind of refusal to say that when circumstances get worse and worse it becomes clearer that something dangerous is going on, though only people that are considered responsible are the ones that are standing there five minutes before the accident occurred. And there is plenty of room in the law as i explained or making the arch and that when you create these circumstances the chain of causation goes back weeks, months and those people are equally responsible if they are willfully blind and reckless and ignore what is happening. And what the risks are. I will also say, this is something my colleagues would also, many of them would laugh about, we dont need new laws. We are not going to get from. That is sort of a problem but we dont need from. Existing law has room for creative prosecutors, daring prosecutors to bring these kinds of cases and be successful. We were talking before about prosecutors and why they are 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 lead mid this as their first point out of the block. The other problem is that there isnt anybody yet really pressing them in a concerted way to make charges, supporting them to do it. Some times a prosecutor sees the light about this kind of thing. One example is last week the new Public Citizen<\/a>s. We are here for a conversation about Rena Steinzor<\/a>s nuke wonderful book why not jail industrial companies, corporate malfeasance, and government inactio inaction, Rena Steinzor<\/a> will speak for about half an hour and then Russel Mokhiber<\/a> and i will talk about Rena Steinzor<\/a>s book and her remarks and we will open it up for discussion. The first step before we dive in, the starting point of the conversation is to recognize our country has an epidemic of corporate crime, abuse, and violence which we all suffer. Is evident in the financial crash that cost our country 22 million, above bp oil spill, worst environmental disaster in the nations history arguably, numerous food safety crises and disasters to kill dozens routinely, new england, pounding pharmacy scandal, Workplace Safety<\/a> and health issues, work places across the country on a daily basis and much more and you have to step back and say we as a country dont do a good job dealing with these problems. One marker of that is they persist over long periods of time. We have an issue about how we set the rules for what is permissible for corporations to do when we say no, you cant compare a human life, you cant threaten the environment, you cant rip us off. We dont do good job setting those rules but the rules we do have we have to have some enforcement system, we have to have inspectors look at factories, make sure the rules are being followed, supervisors look at banks and make sure they are following the rules, it turns out we dont do a good job funding those positions and the positions that are funded a lot of times the inspectors dont do as good a job as they could. Often they dont get enough support from the top. When we do find violations, when inspectors and examiners line problems the issue is what do we do with companies that have broken the law, they have broken civil and criminal law, what do we do . That is where Rena Steinzor<\/a> focuses, both on that question and making the argument that we should focus especially on the third question because we have done such a poor job on the first two. We focus and criminal sanctions we could overcome the limit in our inability to impose proper standards on corporate behavior. This is both a chronic problem and not very accused problem. Todays New York Times<\/a> has a story and on the front page of the business section, laundering prosecutors but the opening of the story says from the factory floor to the corporate Suite Employees<\/a> at general motors, indications of a deadly ignition defense and failed to disclose the problem to the government yet even now as prosecutors are closing in on a criminal case against the automaker their efforts to charge individual employees at the center of the case has hit an obstacle. Legal loopholes the Auto Industry<\/a> itself helped to create. Prosecutor struggle centers on hide legal standards and gas, oversight of carmakers according to experts who understand what is going on with the but investigation. I think that is a good joy because of point for Rena Steinzor<\/a>. We complain about that problem and criticize that version of the story and say prosecutors should step up even with improper loss. We turn it over to Rena Steinzor<\/a>, the author of this excellent new book why not jail industrial companies, corporate malfeasance, and government inaction. The professor at university of Maryland Law School<\/a> and long time and recently passed president of the center for progressive reform. The floor is yours. I really appreciate everybody coming. I see a lot of familiar faces and that makes me happy. My thanks especially to rob who is doing a fabulous job beating an essential organization in really difficult times and to russell, who really deserves a description to his newsletter which is anything but dry and boring and finally Katherine Jones<\/a> who greeted you at the door, she is the person that set up the nuts and bolts of this event. I am 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<\/a> and environmental cases should be among our top priorities. As a nation and as the community. We should work in a concerted and relentless way to promote those kinds of prosecutions. On some level you all agreed 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 that solution and i think it is one that has a lot of popular appeal and also has potential to break through the regulatory gridlock we find ourselves enmeshed in. So my first argument is a matter of ethical politics with political ethics. Sounds so real, doesnt it . We have a longstanding neglect of whitecollar crime in this country. It is extraordinarily acute. We do manage on some level to fight everyday cases 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 and as we begin to talk about the critical issue of mass incarceration which is less sort of outcome of all the terrible things that have been happening in our cities to people of color i think it is important that we also raise the other side of this which is that the justice system, some would say the in justice system, in this country is very very good at throwing poor people of color in a jail and very very bad about policing rich Corporate Executives<\/a> and managers who are so reckless and so grossly negligent that people died in the workplace, as consumers, and we separate irrevocable damage to the environment and i am thinking of good old bp, an amazing scuffle, for ten years and was wrapped on the knuckles many times until its final act was so sensational and even now the company is saying were coming back, stock prices back, not to worry. So neglect of whitecollar crime not only reflects the difference, discrimination between two classes of people in a very unfair way but it also faults the ultimate goals of the criminal justice system, longstanding belief that criminal prosecutions are good because they punish people, the term crime and in the white collar area nothing will deter crime more effectively even having the fbi or state police show up at your door to interview you as a potential target, and crime should reflect the values of our community. What do we know about the values of our community . As rob also mentioned, we have great indications that the American People<\/a> are absolutely disgusted by the failure to prosecute the banks for what happened in 2008. Pulling sponsored by the bowman 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 week and it needs to be emphasized inappropriate cases and there are other polls that show people are very puzzled. They understand why violent street crime has been a priority. I dont think they realize how many people are locked up for nonViolent Crime<\/a>s. But they dont understand why bankers have seemingly walked free. Just a few days ago there was a story about london whale, the guy who read the libor critical statement of banking Interest Rates<\/a> and it said he was not going to be prosecuted, it is too complicated, they couldnt figure out what to do about it. Sends a message. It is also true that the double standard is starting to make local news and i will tell you something if you havent heard about it you will be pretty 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, they were prosecuted for reckless driving. And one guy got a eight year jail term and served two years, actually served two years and told toyota said we think that car was having a sudden acceleration problem. We have a circumstance where a large automakers have a fatal defect that they cover over for years, and then they signed huge settlements with the government but in the meantime the average consumer who bought this, are in complete good faith has his conduct criminalize because the detective car causes an accident. Really disgusting. And would like to move to more pragmatic arguments. I thing, and this is something i say in the boat. May be controversial. I would like to hear what you think about it. My argument is that we need a completely different approach to the harm that is being caused because Government Agencies<\/a> are on their back foot. There is rampant regulatory dysfunction because they are underfunded, grossly underfunded, a have laws that are outdated and no chance having some updated. As an example, you get a heavier penalty if you arrest the wild borough in a state park, and i have citations for this, that if you kill a worker through gross negligence. Trump talks about this all the time and is absolutely wright. Laws are outdated and finally the bureaucrats are kicked upside the head every other minute by the endless drum beat of republicans, conservatives who are consistently on message and want to convince us that everybody in the government is incompetent and malevolent. The agencies dont feel like they have a lot of backing and they have, epa cut its enforcement. It was one of the first things to go to sort of balance the budget and that is extremely important. If i were over there. That would be one of the things that i would not touch until the very last minute. 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 defunded on food safety. They dont have the money to implement the new laws. There have conservators about that in the last couple weeks and now its the ones absolutely looked as if it couldnt muster a itself to even understand what was going on with some of the more sophisticated problems. It took actually plaintiffs thank you, plaintiffs lawyers to discover that the ignition switch had been changed out in 2005. The gm had kept it a secret so all the people with cobol from earlier years for driving around with what they knew was a dangerous switch. Bottom line, too many companies, large and small, galloping across the tundra causing grave damage without any fear of being caught or prosecuted, and this is a bad situation, really something the we need a new approach to address and to really change and if we go up to capitol hill, there are many veteran lobbyists year i see, going up to capitol hill and saying please give the agencys more money, you know what kind of reaction that gets. It is not going to get better anytime soon. If we confined away to advocate for the meet the 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 dont care about their customers. My third argument is that we can make big progress here because changes already started. And with that, robert mentioned some of these but i want to point out for people who may not have followed it, no reason that you should. I am obsessed, doesnt mean you have to be. That is the whole point. That there have been six notable prosecutions in five states that show at least federal prosecutors are beginning to become far more aggressive on health and safety. Just to mentioned them, the bp company men who were in charge of the rig before the block ought and made an absolutely extraordinarily unusual land bad decision about test results 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 corp. Of america which shipped out peanut paste with salmonella, killed nine, made hundreds sick, they have been convicted of felonies and will be sentenced on september 21st. New england, counting center has been charged with racketeering. The core offense is Second Degree<\/a> murder of the 64 people who received these injections, got meningitis and died. There are by the way 741 people still struggling with the aftermath. A situation you wouldnt wish on your worst enemy. The pharmacist, two of them have been charged with deliberately ignoring tests that showed that the clean rooms at the facility were invested with bacteria and fungus, who didnt do routine tests that are very clear, and widely recognized, industry written standards, this wasnt even something the fda put out but were sending out medicine when they were only supposed to send it out it specific patients, that is what compounding is, mix it for specific patient, they yet out to lists of names that included mickey mouse and jesus christ and they will go to trial, it is predicted, in april. The Upper Big Branch<\/a> mine collapse that killed 29 miners, the worst tragedy in decades, the ceo, don blankenship, to great cheering in West Virginia<\/a> despite the concerns the socalled war on coal was going to destroy all these jobs, people were calling every day in the u. S. Attorneys Office Asking<\/a> if he was going to be indicted, he finally did, if you read the indictment you will be amazed at the kind of things the man was saying in writing and even more interesting that his Senior Executives<\/a> kept all the nodes. He was saying things like we dont have time to Pay Attention<\/a> to safety. We need to dig coal and was getting production reports every 30 minutes from the executives. Freedom industries, the people but ran the tank farm that had the leak that put the unpronounceable chemical that has never been tested in to the charleston water supply again in West Virginia<\/a> have been charged and several have pled guilty. The jensen brothers, perhaps the most sympathetic because they had a really smart lawyer, sold cantaloupe infected with listeria, they pled guilty but didnt serve any jail time, but still the two food prosecutions have convinced the industry think goodness because we are not implementing food safety modernization act, the if you hurt people, people get sick of of the food you send out, you can face criminal charges. There are common characteristics i want to run through quickly because my ultimate goal is to make these behaviors a component of a guilty mind you need to have to be prosecuted for ups crime. You see them when you look deeply into all of these incidents and there have been thousands of pages of very detailed, careful, objective reports have been written about each incident. You look into them you can gather a few threads in your hand. First of all, everyone had ample warning they were doing something wrong because the regulators were in effect joy will be buzzing around from. Beat mine, Upper Big Branch<\/a> mine was evacuated three times in the two weeks leading up to 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 appeal to them. Put them off. There is the relentless and irrational demand that people work harder and work faster. Texas city refinery under george w. Bush, 15 people killed, the workers in charge of the unit that cause the explosion had been working 12 hour shifts for 29 straight days. This is very common. Stovepipe management which had different responsibilities assigned, and i am actually not sure if it is deliberate but it is very effective. Nobody knows all whole picture. Closely related to that, a system that discourages reporting any bad news so at the mine when people would say, miners would say the ventilation system isnt working would be told that they had kids, they needed to feed, why dont they be quiet or there wouldnt be around job much longer. The normalization of deviance is another very common thread. This is when people see the systems are failing, that there are problems, near misses mounting up and yet they rationalize it. They say these risks are really not that serious, we can accommodate fiske, as long as we are aware of it is going to be okay and they talk themselves into a kind of groups think that is blind to the ramifications. What could happen. One last one is elaborate paper tigers. Big corporations have reams of papers, manuals, directives, things put on the lunchroom bulletin board, and so much of it and it is begin award. Nobody is aware of it, nobody reads it and there is no system for enforcing it. It is not done in a way that the average bluecollar worker can understand. That is very ambitious by the way for me to say. If i were to, if there were other professors of criminal law here is they would be falling off their chairs at the idea that this kind of behavior should demonstrate mens ray at, that was guilty mind, and that is largely a part of the problem. Because theres this kind of refusal to say that when circumstances get worse and worse it becomes clearer that something dangerous is going on, though only people that are considered responsible are the ones that are standing there five minutes before the accident occurred. And there is plenty of room in the law as i explained or making the arch and that when you create these circumstances the chain of causation goes back weeks, months and those people are equally responsible if they are willfully blind and reckless and ignore what is happening. And what the risks are. I will also say, this is something my colleagues would also, many of them would laugh about, we dont need new laws. We are not going to get from. That is sort of a problem but we dont need from. Existing law has room for creative prosecutors, daring prosecutors to bring these kinds of cases and be successful. We were talking before about prosecutors and why they are 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 lead mid this as their first point out of the block. The other problem is that there isnt anybody yet really pressing them in a concerted way to make charges, supporting them to do it. Some times a prosecutor sees the light about this kind of thing. One example is last week the new York Attorney<\/a> general announced that he was going to prosecute the owners of a papa johns chain at had stolen employees wages. They had literally appropriated what they were supposed to be paying airline 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 Division<\/a> of the part of labor and was a wonderful example of the kind of partnership that can go on between state and local prosecutors who have even more flexible ways of approaching these problems and federal officials also i dont overlook the Justice Department<\/a> all. They are critical to the whole thing. Very important as we advocate that we push, this is one of the reasons i am so concerned and interested in these managerial policies, these are not policies that are made at the blind worker level. Making them central. It is not going to do anything if wine workers are scapegoating and this has happened in industry after industry. It is a serious problem, one of the things i talk with my friends and organized labor on out, they are directly concerned scapegoating line workers doesnt do anything. The company is happy, tried to fire them all before they even get charged. I am happy to move on. When they were in a circumstance when they couldnt have done anything different because they didnt have the money or the ability to avoid the accident and finally as the wage that example shows it is really important that we work with state and local prosecutors on this, not just federal prosecutors. One of a little known facts is something russell can talk about because he lived through it, the First Corporate<\/a> criminal case is brought against ford motor in modern times for the pinto which you may remember had a gas tank in the back when it was rear ended at relatively low speeds. It turned into a fireball and killed everybody inside it and it was a county prosecutor who covered the case, a county prosecutor in indiana who brought the charges. Unfortunately he lost, didnt have a great judge, ford motor co. Paid 2 million, he had 20,000 to him but he is courageous. I still sort of tip my hat to him whenever i think about it. This wont be easy and i dont want to pretend a that it will. I played briefly with the idea of telling some of these stories. I mentioned a few details but i thought that would be tedious. Just take my word for the fact that were you to manage to convince yourself to read these thousands of pages of very boring reports and i am not suggesting that you would, you should. You would be really surprised by some of the things that go on and how obvious it should be that peoples lives are in danger. I want to say we have already begun work in the workers safety area thanks to the Public Welfare<\/a> foundation. We actually are working on trying to make connections with state and local prosecutors and encourage criminal prosecution. One of the cases we are aware of and have been talking with the activists in new york, a case, routine case, Construction Company<\/a> sent a bunch of workers in without checking where the load bearing walls are of the car dealership they want to demolished. The workers go in and start tearing it down, the load bearing wall are the first things they hammer at, the whole thing collapses and the man is killed. That is the kind these cases go from simple to complicated but they really are astounding that people are putting these kinds of positions and i suggest criminal law is the best answer. [applause] fifth you dont have to read thousands of pages, Rena Steinzor<\/a> read the mall and wrote a great book about them so you can just buy the book, that is one way to get the gist of what is happening. The first thing i would say is prosecutors are human beings too. Rena steinzor mentioned they hate losing. They hate to bring a case to trial and lose and the great thing about this book and a bunch of other books i will mention that are being written now, this new wave of corporate crime activism is it is going to give them space to act. This book is a road map for prosecutors. The first thing, this book is the cornerstone for what i call a new Wave Movement<\/a> to control corporate crime and it is in the context of a group of citizens academics reporters and activists moving together for the first time. The books that were written when we started corporate crime reporting. Corporate crime in the pharmaceutical industry. And one called corporate predator. The first interview ever during that interview, Rudy Guiliani<\/a>, why Rudy Guiliani<\/a> . He was a republican u. S. Attorney in new york, criminally prosecuting corporations as all launching pad to becoming mayor of new york. In indiana, prosecuted for Lauder Company<\/a> for, side. Republicans, conservatives approached by the families of dead teenage girls, and there was a book and mother jones that reprinted the memo, if you recall this to fix them that is what is going to cost, how much is a life worth . Once at the Movement Starts<\/a> it is not about democrat or republican, is about basic human values and justice. This is the cornerstone book for removing. Brendon garrett, university of virginia law school, too big to jail, Duke University<\/a> professor coming out with a book called capital offenses. David allman, michigan law school, former federal prosecutor, head of the federal crimes unit writing about criminally prosecuting, you have your citizenry quarters, matt taibbi, the divide, talking about american injustice in the age of the wealth gap. Upcoming book about corporate crime focusing on what Rena Steinzor<\/a> was talking about, failure of prosecutorial will. Y no criminal prosecution of big banks or their executives . And there are citizen activists, many of them in this room, the Public Citizen<\/a> is the heart for citizen activism against corporate crime and violence, joining with academics and reporters and you are starting to see the movement you saw 20 years ago. With this movement you are seeing a rise of what i call law and order liberals, traditionally if you think lawandorder using conservative republicans. They are more comfortable criminally prosecuting anyone and that is why Rudy Giuliani<\/a> was comfortable prosecuting corporate crime because it was criminal prosecution first. Liberals say i dont know if i want to prosecute here but now you are seeing this sort of morphed entity, law and order liberals and they would agree with president obama the first president to visit a federal prison this week. They would agree with president obama is that we should be throwing up prisons with nonviolent drug offenders. Instead lets focus on Violent Crime<\/a> and i would argue Rena Steinzor<\/a> argues the Violent Crime<\/a> we focus on are the kinds of cases in her book. Peanut corp. Of america nine dead. New england, pounding 48. Lets focus on those Violent Crime<\/a>s. Rena steinzor has got a prosecutors mentality. She delved deeply into the facts in future cases building a case for corporate criminal prosecution. And when we started our publication 33 years ago there were prosecutors of Rena Steinzor<\/a>s mind set who took Violent Crime<\/a> seriously. There was a District Attorney<\/a> in los angeles whose policy was any time there was a death on the job Los Angeles County<\/a> would investigate it as a crime. He didnt always prosecute it as a crime but would investigate every death on the job as a crime. He brought a lot of cases, homicides, reckless and dangerous cases against companies and executives in Los Angeles County<\/a> for the deaths of workers. Now is starting to come back in Los Angeles County<\/a> there were restarting that program and in october of 2012 there was a young man workingthe kinds of fact you will see throughout the book, these other kinds of fact you will see, working at a Bumblebee Tuna<\/a> Processing Plant<\/a> injured 35 ft cylindrical oven as part of his job at bumblebee. The oven was used to sterilize cans of tuna 70,000. And why is that the case. It is through the law is incredibly weak but there are criminal prosecutions that can be flawed. David michael, the head of the osha should head over to the Justice Department<\/a> and sit down and say what is going on here . Criminally prosecuting people in upstate new york for mistreating cats. Maybe they should be criminally prosecuted. These are people who are dying on the joy of. Human beings. Another case starting to come in to the press are auto cases, the one i have been looking at is jeep cherokee, similar to the pinto they put the tag behind the rear axle. Someone accidentally rear ends the car may be recklessly, passengers inside the jeep survive the crash but the gas leak, there is an explosion, the person who rear ends the car ends up in jail. No criminal investigation. This is a dirty deal including the socalled recall which didnt do anything. You are going to be reading about this case because there is the Grassroots Movement<\/a> among people who one woman who witnessed one of these incinerations and got so upset she started a petition on line we need to criminally prosecute, have a criminal investigation of the company and executives and there are 10,000 signatures within a couple months and the families where the families of drivers who were end the car, where their loved ones are in jail what would have been not fender bender if the gas tank wasnt right there. This is the kind of double standard matt taibbi talks about where you or i engage in criminal activity we end up in jail. They engage in activities it kills people and get their bones. The reason i believe why not jail industrial companies, corporate malfeasance, and government inaction is the cornerstone of this movement is it is written as a road map for prosecutors on the one hand comment and to enlighten them and generate this new movement for corporate crime. A lot of other topics we will get into in the question period, there is one other. Rena steinzor talks about deferred on prosecution agreement. The 29 goldminers who died, the prosecutor even though he has proceeded against the executives and chief executive looked at the company cant entered into a non prosecution agreement. Non prosecution agreement, we wont prosecute you, pay a fine. Those fine should Fund Corporate<\/a> crime prosecutors, not the treasury department. They should be going to fund the prosecutors but we wont prosecute. That is one thing, lets enter into we dont think we dont want to try to win this case so we have a nice agreement with you. Pay up some money and that will be it. The deferred prosecution agreement, these things were initially intended by the Justice Department<\/a> in the attorneys manual to clears the jail of minor first offenders. You broke and enters the high school to get an ipad, we will charge you but we will defer the prosecution and if you are a good boy or girl in a year we will drop the charge. That was the intention but these giant corporations are getting them for these horrific that switches 10 or 15 years ago, it used to be plead guilty, pay the fine. We will put appropriation officers, the revolving door, most recently a couple rich examples of former attorneygeneral and the head of the criminal division, eric holder, spinning in and out of the Justice Department<\/a>, covington up to big banks, Justice Department<\/a>, the refuse to prosecute. That happens throughout the federal government. That will be a key issue in addressing this to figure out how we need to get where we need to get to. Let me at a few additional remarks and open up the conversation. I want to jump on a few points. I want to thank those who put the event together, center for progressive reform and others who helped, appreciate you doing this very much. Talking about the world of corporate and whitecollar crime, the first point, if you catch the making six you can start that. The first thing is the distinction between prosecuting individuals and prosecuting corporations. They are both superimportant. Rena steinzors book makes the case for doing both but her focus is on the individuals because there is Something Different<\/a> that happens when you hold individuals accountable. One of the problems we have in dealing with corporate crime and violence is future responsibility and making some actual person, not a corporation but an actual person accountable and responsible for what goes on. You have to go after the corporation too to get that but theres a different piece about going after the individual so a big portion of the book is devoted to going after individual executives, individual managers, not the lowerlevel people but the top people in decisions of the making rolls, the people, not just the corporations. That is the first thing that comes out in the book. The second which Russel Mokhiber<\/a> once talked about extensively in the book apart from the concern about losing cases the other resistance is worrying about the idea of a guilty mind. Is it fair to go after the ceo and hold him or her responsible for what happens on the shop floor the same way you hold a street criminal responsible for their decision to break into a house . The person who did it obviously physically did it with their hands, knew what they were doing, their mind is guilty and you can see that clearly. The manager, the executive, abstractly to know if they are really responsible. What comes out in the book even more than your comments about these themes about it but when you look at actual cases when you look in detail, the abstraction goes away because you actually see the executive did know, not that they should have known or in an abstract world they ought to have been responsible, they did know, they pushed the policy that led directly to the harm so some of the problem of a guilty mind issue goes away when you look at the actual specific cases and that is in part why these recent prosecutions have been moving forward. There is abstract level question to get into about where you draw the line and you can do a lot of interesting things, when is it too remote to go after executives. But you can leave those difficult cases aside and a lot of easy cases, turns out by and large the ceo or some high level person is happening, push for it to happen, off on the policy and was responsible by any normal sense of morality for what happened on lush shop floor or the car crash or the oil platform. That is one of the key issues but i think the break through thing about the book is it shows even if you deal with is on the conceptual level when you lifted the actual cases a lot of them are not so complicated. Parenthetically, not to contradict Russel Mokhiber<\/a> this is a road map for prosecutors but it is not like it is a born roadmap. It is a good book to read, not just for people who are prosecuted. You care about the issues of social justice, really good book to read. That is not my third point, it is parenthetical. I go back to the third point to pick up on Russel Mokhiber<\/a> talking about institutions and the issue of not just looking at individuals but corporations and corporate structure. One reason it is important to go after both the individuals and corporations is corporations are so powerful and malleable if you do one thing they let it go but if it turns out if you hold top people responsible if the corporation can get off that consolation to people who make up the corporation will from out a sacrificial lamb and keep going. You have to do both. It is important to go after the corporation as an institution, as an entity as well as individuals. We have a tremendously difficult time doing that in the last 10 or 15 years because of the problem Russel Mokhiber<\/a> talkedabout. In some areas of the law there has been appropriate criminal prosecution like for environmental crimes they do a good job but in a lot of other areas especially most acutely in financial crimes they do a horrible job. They ran away from criminal prosecution altogether and replaced prosecution with these ideas that the deferred prosecution agreement and on prosecution agreement which is basically a deal not to prosecute, not to criminally prosecute in exchange for a promise by the company, usually a bank but not always not to violate the law in the future which is not much of a promise because you are not supposed to violate the law in the future without the deal you made in the first place that this has become the norm, dozens of instances happening every year since around 2000, much worse in the last 5 to 7 years. The worst example is messy and another contender involved hsbc, that company was involved in moneylaundering on a scale beyond the ability to get your head around. They were doing moneylaundering on behalf of large scale traffickers and countries the United States<\/a> considers to be enemies. We have come to expect if you crash the Global Economy<\/a> and throw people out of work and throw hundreds of millions out of their homes you are not going to be criminally prosecuted but you would think at least if you were enabling narco trafficking on a large scale and assisting countries the United States<\/a> calls enemies the you would be criminally prosecuted for that but you would be wrong if you thought that because you are not if you are a large bank and that was the example where the guy was in charge of criminal prosecution at the time, lanny borrower went back and said that we cant go after them because we are worried what would happen to the Global Economy<\/a> if we criminally prosecute them. That becomes the justification. That is literally too big to jail or too big to prosecute. This is a huge problem. Concluding note. The good part of that story, the story of peace that goes with this nascent thing Rena Steinzor<\/a> and Russel Mokhiber<\/a> are talking about, hsbc might have been at tipping point. The whole thing started to become unsustainable and thanks to all the pressure from the people russell mentioned focused on this issue, it is harder for the Justice Department<\/a> to enter these deals. They are still doing it but we are seeing the first actual prosecution, there is that deal in the plea agreement but to a criminal prosecution, we saw that in the last few weeks, with a market manipulation case and even then they are going through all kinds of contortions to avoid appropriate sanctions the go with the guilty plea but it is a step forward that the Justice Department<\/a> now feels a lot of reticence about entering these agreements Going Forward<\/a> so we have a serious problem that has become worse in terms of the important issue in the last 50 years and we are seeing it cycling back in a different way and we have an opportunity to push it so there is some discipline on corporate misbehavior. One thing we disagree about is we for sure have existing authority but we also need more laws to make it easier. We dont want just we want every prosecutor to figure out, they ought to be doing it but that involves mostly political will and will help them if they have more legal tools. Also upheld, and in the right direction on those issues so lets pause right there. That is it from the panel and weep like to open up for conversation. You would like to raise a question or make a brief comment you should raise your hand and identify yourself. A great panel. I have all kinds of questions. I will limit myself to two. The point about you brought it up the genesis of but epa, one of the initial interesting reforms, level offender reforms, and corporate crime been see tool makes the criminaljustice forum, criminal justice forum. Gaining traction. Are you worried there will be other reforms, and definitely talked about on the hill with what is up a little bit. Prosecutorial discretion with another question especially when it comes to epa, how do you push prosecutors away . The subject with this question on the out such with prosecutorial discretion, and the last question, can you explain why the epa was any different, what is the criminal element the site besides the fact that it responds to criminal violation, look like criminal remedies . That wasnt even close to two questions. Explain your question. Can i do the first one . I actually am constrained ricans turned that whitecollar legal party will be undermined in the overcriminalization, legislation we keep getting promised. On the hills these days if you have strange bedfellows it is one of the only way is to get something done. In this particular case we have the naacp which is justifiably concerned about mandatory minimum sentences and overcharging and mass incarceration and president obama has been incredibly progressive in leadership on those concerns but they are in coalition with the Koch Brothers<\/a> general counsel and with a slew of other people, the heritage foundation, a leading theorists, up so senator gordon promised us a few days ago that there would be big legislation introduced to solve this problem and james and i knew worked closely together controlling the hill, he does a lot of the controlling. Time mostly sit and nag him about it. And i think they could try to redefine in a way that rob was hitting the nail on the head, it could be defined to mean i actually see it with my eyes, put my hands on the machinery and that is the only way i am liable which would make these cases very difficult to bring and it will be a big bill and it will be one of these Bipartisan Solutions<\/a> we love so much and people will be very anxious to get something done since they basically dont do anything most of the time and i think it is the real serious danger. I email robbed once every three days whining and moaning. Uplifting, encouraging. Worrying about this. Number 3, number 2, number 3, what part is criminal . Theres actually a criminal charge so the company is charging the crime. There is usually a statement of fact in admitting to criminal wrongdoing and then the prosecution is deferred over a period of time, two or three years and if the company is plagued by the rules of the agreement theres no criminal charge but if they dont criminal charge pretty much similar to declination except the government actually gets its pound of flesh, we wont criminal prosecute you but we want you to pay a fine or a sum of money. How do you cab prosecutorial discretion . The way this came about was when eric holder was there the first time before being sworn in to covington and back as attorneygeneral he created the ed homan number. If you think the collateral consequences of the corporation outweighed the benefits, then go with a deferred prosecution agreement. Of course, they dont take that into consideration when it, feeling me. To our collateral consequences. I may not get a job, i wont be able to vote. I will be disgraced in the community but they dont tell prosecutors take into consideration the collateral consequences. So the way you would cabinet it would be detail he was attorneys we will not do these deferred nonprosecution for Big Companies<\/a> anymore. If you show to violate criminal law, either get a guilty plea or go to trial. Trial. I want to say quickly hear over and over again that Arthur Andersen<\/a> is the reason for this policy. I think i would say 80 of the news stories reporting on these things say of course the reason is Arthur Andersen<\/a>. Its worth noting Arthur Andersen<\/a> was enron speak out in an independent, help them and io all the reasons why they ripped off everyone had collapsed, that one thing. Arthur andersen, their clients, were fleeing by the hundreds and thousands of clients were leaving long before the Justice Department<\/a> indicted them. The Justice Department<\/a> indicted in because they were shredding paper, tons of paper for weeks until the sec knocked on the door and actually said ladies, we would like to see some evidence. They were indicted and convicted, it went to the court of appeals and the conviction was upheld and to the Supreme Court<\/a> years after the fact said we dont like supporting in the charge to the jury, so we dont like, they reversed the conviction. By then the company was long gone. But it isnt true to say that Arthur Andersen<\/a> went out of business only because it was criminally indicted. It went out of business because it was enrons account and no one wanted anything to do with it. It such a bad reputation. Couldnt resist, Arthur Andersen<\/a> makes me foam at the mouth. [laughter] sound like [inaudible] they only preferred, osha jennett refers historically in the recent past about two, three cases a year. They say the reason is because the law, which is weak, and we dont disagree by the way. I would love to have new laws. That would be fabulous. Im just trying to make the best, make a silk purse out of a sows ear of the osha. But it is only misdemeanor but there are all sorts of other charges. Lying to the government, obstructing justice, destroying evidence, wire fraud. Theres the whole series of other violations that can be alleged, which is what the u. S. Attorney did in the blankenship case. Are there every cases where they settle out with a company that you i believe there was a bulletin Chemical Plant<\/a> in louisiana and they settle down. It doesnt give rise to a criminal. Spirit so the Justice Department<\/a> well, they couldnt. A serious violation doesnt trigger that. There have been a number of banks that it entered into a whole series of these things and they all seem to be are generally the same kind of violations of law and fraud and other things like that. Can you cite some instances where someone has violated epa and been sanctioned for it speak with you me, when do they come back and say you didnt behave yourselves and now were going to start a criminal case . There was a study on that and saw, the answer is not all that often, right . In the last round for the five banks, ubs was one of them credit suisse. Spirit basically often dont have agreements but i think it was ubs they said okay they didnt criminally charged in what is ever going to prosecute you for the old thing because you violated the agreement. Thats about the only example i know where the repeat wrongdoer got caught up in the first deferred prosecution. [inaudible] spirit ill tie you what they said. They said that you are a corporate monitor and to set this very elaborate system where the corporate monitor is watching over what the company is doing. Generally it is a friend of the prosecutor. Is one of the greatest advocates of this with chris christie, the governor of new jersey, and he was hiring his friends in bluechip law firms to be the monitors. He also somewhat engineered a contribution to Seton Hall Law School<\/a> as part of one of these agreements. And ended up getting called up on the hill for him to ask him why he was doing all these bizarre things. And he ended up walking out of the hearing. Is why i do anticipate that if, as his president ial Campaign Goes<\/a> on, some of these shenanigans will come up again, and thats a good thing because hes an example of how they can be done. Its not just the choice to do a deferred prosecution agreement for hsbc, which is a terrible choice as rob explained. Its also in the implementation. There can be no a lot of corruption. And just to say that Alpha Natural Resources<\/a> which was the successor of Massey Energy<\/a> got one of these, and when he said that reports back, this is one of the very few reasons why im critical, the only reason im really generally a great fan of the West Virginia<\/a> u. S. Attorney, nixon to reports in he wouldnt release them to the public. So very often there put under a monitor, record all these things but we cant see what they have done because they are not public. Thats yet another aspect of this that needs to be pushed spending we are involved with pfizer working to get those reports under the freedom of information act and we failed, fortunate, to succeed. The short answer is theres little or no value in these deals. Spent a lot of money spirit one of the books rustled Russel Mitchell<\/a> talks with compliance effort is a teacher, as much detail as to what can talk about them, and hes a little on this same conclusion. Theres one of two companies where theres a change, and basically change because a top manager says this is out of control ever dont want to be criminal company but it wasnt because they entered into the deal and all the compliance and monitoring and all that stuff. [inaudible] he has a database. He actually pulled out defer to prosecution and found that there is been very little changed as a result of it. And some of the information you are suggesting, he also says theres no further prosecution. He actually, he also makes the point which is very important, that these kinds of agreements have exploded under obama. They are much more common than they were under george w. Bush even. So thats also embarrassing. The holder just the department had a real one spot when it comes to these kinds of things. Spewing lets give it and gary and you and then we will call it the thank you all for putting up on the hotlines on a hot day. Thank you all for this book. I have two questions which will revert you three questions. One is just where is their creative opportunities for more advanced prosecution when you have inherently say unsafe industry . You have refineries having fire every weeks in this country. You have whole cities endangered. You have climate induced activity that are known and willful by these industries, under local criminal law reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor i think in many places would seem to be germane, but you seem to suggest theres a line between civil and criminal im wondering what robots are, any creative acts that prevent these kinds of crimes . And, in fact, criminal negligence ongoing right now. The second is what role do you think judges would play, the mcdonald case where the judge ruled to change the behavior of the company and made a larger award not because just Victims Compensation<\/a> but teach the company a lesson and change its behavior. In addition to prosecutors, things you recommend or needs to be done to change the way how judges view these things . Great depression. I dont how many there were but they were great. Great questions. Reckless homicide is what i was talking about and thats of l. A. It doesnt require the intent to come to think im to go murder some workers because i would never argue that the Corporate Officers<\/a> would do that. Its more sort of a reckless ignoring, a willful blindness to very dangerous circumstances. As for preventing things, the criminal law is not the best tool for the. It really does punish, close the barn door after all the horses have went away. Im not, you think of the word more criminal prosecutions we might get a time, we may get to the point where Companies Said<\/a> we need some regulation. That would be great. But the refinery things where the our fires, people are very often badly injured, if not killed. Im very glad that russel brought up the los angeles da who was really very aggressive on these things and has resuscitated his whole program. So that would be naming, naming your not just killing but meaning. Judges, we have to mention the recruitment of judd gregg Office District<\/a> court judge in new york who has done more to fight different prosecution agreements that anybody. He just rejects things. I fourthly he got reversed by the court of appeals but in the citibank case it was he just said im going to accept the settlement. Idleness and while youre doing that. So do you want okay. My name is katie. We are currently in the process of undertaking a project on exactly this issue, prosecution of companies that are in human rights violations. [inaudible] protection of witnesses and victims. So i was wondering if those are things came up in your research and if you could speak to that works and then a i have a second question as well, which is that in the cases you cited were using success, what do you think enabled those prosecutors to take them forward, how they overcame the challenges that you mentioned . I understand why training would be a problem, and its especially a problem when it comes to the police. So in worker deaths, sometimes the police are called, sometimes they are not. We are beginning to discover osha gets better a couple of days later. Its very important to preserve the crime scene, of course. People may not realize, for example, there should have been no way that the tune the oven was closed with someone inside. They shouldve been an alarm or some kind of check. So training is a very big issue. Protecting of witnesses, i would have to think more about that. And what was your the second question was, were using success, how do you think investigators and prosecutors were able to overcome the challenges that usually presented in these type of cases . They were just very high profile, very disturbing and really there were a lot of investigations that were done around the same time that really unpacked what had happened. So that prosecutors had a lot of help. In West Virginia<\/a>, the guy kept flipping people. You see this on tv, right click he kept charging people that were one level below massey and then they would rule on massey. The indictment which i was reading again this weekend, this is what i do for fun, really need to get a life, had all these notes quoted that somebody had saved, handwritten notes from blankenship. It wasnt even emailing. He probably had a quarrel and some parchment quill. I which is a thats traditionally how prosecutors go after people, and companies. But i think it was Something Else<\/a> there. For generations people who are dying in the minds in West Virginia<\/a>, this is the first time they went after them. You mentioned early individual prosecutors within the office who were driven by ed said were going to go after it and get this. And actually, i do nothing but steve ruby was the individual prosecutor, i think his father was involved. I really think you. I thank you for your patience and thank you for coming. And thank rob and thank Public Citizen<\/a>. [applause] this is the book, why not jail . industrial catastrophes, corporate malfeasance, and government inaction. Rena steinzor, Cambridge University<\/a> press. Make sure you get it, and thank you all very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] you are watching of tv, television for serious readers. 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