May be to step back, the starting point of the conversation is to recognize that our country has an epidemic of corporate crime, abuse and violence which we all suffer its evident in the financial crash of cost the country 22 million in the blowup in the oil spill in the environmental disaster in the nations history nations history arguably and numerous food safety crises and disasters that kill dozens routinely in the new england compound scandal in Workplace Safety and Health Issues that rise on a dalia basis and much more. We have to step back and say we dont do a very good job of dealing with these problems and one marker of that is if they persist over a long period 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 all human life and know no you cant threaten the environment. We have to make sure the rules are being followed, supervisors look at the think tank sure they are following the rule and it turns out that we dont waver a good job of funding those positions and the positions that are not funded a lot of times the instructors dont do a good job as they should often because they dont get a lot of support from the top. And then when we do find violations when the inspectors and examiners defined problems the issue is what do we do with companies that have broken the civil and criminal law would we do and thats really where the book focuses on the question and im making the argument that we should focus on the first two and criminal sanction and the inability of the proper standards. And that is a problem. Today the New York Times has a story in the business section for charging gm employees and the opening of the story says from the corporate suite employers in the Deadly Mission effect have failed to disclose the problems of the government. Yet even now as they are closing in on the case against the automaker they are charging individual employers at the center of the case theyve hit an obstacle. The loopholes of the Auto Industry itself helped create. The struggles are sent with oversight of carmakers according to experts that understand whats going on. That is a good jumping off point. They will complain about the problem and criticized the version of the story and to say y the prosecutors should have stood up with improper law. Let me turn it over. She is the author again on the new book why not jail. The professor at the university of Maryland Law School and the long time and recently passed president for the progressive reform. The floor is yours. I appreciate everybody coming. I see a lot of familiar faces, and back makes me happy. Thanks especially to rob whos doing a fabulous job we reading this agency in a difficult time and russell, who really deserves a subscription with anything but dry and boring and finally to Catherine Jones who greeted you at the door, she is the person that sort of set up the nuts and bolts of this secret weapon, so i am very grateful to her. I have a simple genda for my 20 minutes and that is to convince you that criminal prosecution of corporate managers and corporations themselves in the worst Safety Environment for cases should be among the 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 doesnt spend much time because weve 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 a potential to sort of breakthrough by regulatory gridlock that we find ourselves in. So, my first argument is a matter of ethical politics or political ethics. That sounds pretty professorial, doesnt it . As mentioned, we have been longstanding neglect of whitecollar crime in the country. Its extraordinarily acute. We do manage on some level to fight every day cases of fraud and embezzlement even at the state level. But at the federal level, there has been a shocking neglect in these kind of cases and as we begin to talk about the critical issue of the mass incarceration which is the sort of outcome of all the terrible things that have been happening in the citys two people of color, i think its important that we also raise the other side of this which is the justice system, some would say the injustice system in the country is very good at slowing poor people of color in jail and a very, very bad aout policing which Corporate Executives and managers that are so reckless and so grossly negligent that people die in the workplace. It was intended and was wrapped rapped on the knuckles many times until its final act was so sensational and even now the company is saying we are coming back in the stock prices back not to worry. So neglected White Collar Crime not only reflects a difference of discrimination between two classes of people in a very unfair way, but also the ultimate goals of the criminal justice system. The longstanding belief that criminal prosecutions are good because they punish people, they deter crime and nothing could beat her crime more effectively than having the fbi or the state police show up at your door to interview you as a potential target and crying should reflect the values of our community. So, what do we know about the values of the community. As rob also mentioned, we have great indication that the American People are absolutely disgusted by the failure to prosecute the banks for what happened in 2008. The polling spo nsored the foundation which is one of the cosponsors of this event shows beyond a doubt that people think enforcement is too weak and it needs to be emphasized in appropriate cases and there are others that showed people are very puzzled. They understand why violent street crimes have been a priority. I dont think they realize how many people are locked up for nonviolent crimes. But they dont understand why the bankers have walked free. Just a few days ago there was a story about the london whale come at a, the critical statement of the banking Interest Rates and said he wasnt going to be prosecuted. It is too complicated. They couldnt figure out what to do about it to send a message. So, its also true that the double standard is starting to make local news and now i will tell you something if you hadnt havent heard about it youre going to be pretty surprised. There were cases where drivers of defective cars that had fatal crashes, one was the 200 and one is a gm car where they were prosecuted for reckless driving and one guy got an eightyear jail term and served two years he served for two years until toyota said we think that card was having a sudden acceleration problem. So we had a circumstance. They covered over for years andsign huge settlement of the government that in the meantime the average consumer to have the conduct criminalized because the defective car causes an accident. Its really disgusting. I would like to move to more pragmatic arguments. I think, and this is something that i say in the book and it 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 has been caused because the Government Agencies are on their back foot. There is a rampant regulatory dysfunction because they are underfunded, grossly underfunded. They have laws that are outdated and no chance of having been updated as an example, you get a heavy penalty if you harass a wild burrow in a state park. Its worse than than if you kill a worker through gross negligence or trump talks about this overtime and hes absolutely right, walls are outdated. And finally, the bureaucrats Civil Servants were kicked upside the head. It was the endless drumbeat of republicans conservatives that are consistently on the message and want to convince us that everybody in the government is incompetent and malevolent. So the agencies dont feel like they have a lot of backing. And at the epa cut its enforcement. It was one of the first things to go to sort of balancehe budget and that is extremely important if i were over there that would be one of my things that i wouldnt touch until the very last minute. They seem to have abandoned all rulemaking. Thereve been several stories in the last coupleof weeks. They were absolutely overlooked as if they could muster itself to even understand what was going on. It took the plaintiffs lawyers to discover that the ignition switch had actually been changed out 2005. We knew that it was a dangerous switch. Bottom line is i would say too Many Companies large and small are galloping ross the tundra calls a grave damage without any fear of being ross were prosecuted and its a bad situation into something that we need a new approach to addressing the really change and if we go up to capitol hill there are veteran lobbyists here that i see going up to capitol hill saying would you give the agencies more money. If we can find a way to advocate a sharp remedy that is appropriately harsh in the right cases, i think that it would would have a lot of residents with people that have a perception that the government is not protecting them and that the companies are only about the bottom line and really dont care about their customers. So my third argument is that we can make a big progress here because change is in the reach already started. With that, rob mentioned some of these but i want to point out to people who may not have followed it. One of them that there has been since the notable prosecutions in the states that show at least federal prosecutors are beginning to become far more aggressive on health and safety. The bp company men that are in charge of the risk before the blowout. It is unusual in the bad decisions about a test result they got an. They will be charged and go to trial in the fall. At the Peanut Corporation of america that shipped out with salmonella killed nine and made hundreds of sick, they had been convicted of felonies in that they will be sentenced on september 21. New England Compounding Center has been charged with racketeering. The core of his seconddegree murder of the 64 people that receive these injections and got meningitis and died. By the way there are 741 people who were still struggling with the aftermath of the disease. Its a situation you wouldnt wish on your worst enemy. The pharmacists, two of them have been charged with deliberately ignoring the tests that show the rooms in the facility were infested with bacteria and fungus who didnt do a routine tests that are very clear in the widely recognized industry standards this wasnt even something the fda put out were sending up medicine when they were on a supposed to send it out to specific patients. They will go to trial if predicted in april. The collapse killed 29 miners were the worst tragedy in decades. The ceo, despite the concern thats going to destroy all these shops, people were hauling calling every day asking if he was going to invite them. If you read this you would be amazed at what he was saying and writing. And its even more interesting that his Senior Executives kept all the notes. Saying things like we dont have the time to Pay Attention to safety. They were getting reports every 30 minutes from the executives. Freedom industry, the people that ran the tank farm that had the week that put the un pronounced chemical that has never been tested into the charleston water supply again in West Virginia have been charged, and several of them have put guilty. They were the most sympathetic because they had a smart lawyer and it was infected with wisteria and they put guilty but didnt serve any jail time. But still, the food prosecutions that convinced the industry, thank goodness because we are not implementing the modernization act if you hurt people, people get sick of the food that you send out you can face criminal charges. There are some common characteristics i just want to run through 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. They are very widespread and you see them when you look deeply into all of these incidents and there have been thousands of pages of very detailed objective reports that have been written about each incident. If you look into them you can gather a few in your hand. First of all, everyone had an ample warning they were doing something wrong because the regulators were buzzing around them. It was evacuated in the weeks leading up to the explosion that killed 29 men. They had hundreds of violations pending for the exact practices that caused the explosion and get a persisted. They appeal to them and puts them off. There is a relentless and an air rational demand that people work harder and faster. At the texas city refinery that was under george w. Bush, 15 people killed, the workers that were in charge of the unit that caused the explosion had been working for 12 hour shifts for 29 straight days. This is very common. Stovepipe management that has a different responsibility assigned im actually not sure if it is delivered but its effective, so nobody knows the whole picture. For the miners would so 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 the systems are failing and there are problems that are near miss is mounting this is mounting up and get they rationalize and they say they are really not that serious and we can accommodate this as long as we are aware of it is going to be okay and they talk themselves into this group that is blind to what the ramifications are and what could happen. So one last one big corporations have reams of papers, manuals, 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 there is no system for enforcing it. Its not done in a way that the average bluecollar worker cannot understand. So, thats very ambitious by the way for me to say. If there were other professors in the criminal law where they would be falling off their chairs at the idea that this kind of behavior should demonstrate mens mens rea and that is part of the problem because there is a kind of refusal to say when the circumstances get worse and worse it becomes clear something dangerous is going on and the only people considered responsible are those that are standing there five minutes before the accident occurred. And there is plenty of room as i explain in the book for making the argument that when you create these circumstances, the chain of causation goes weeks, months and people are equally responsible if they are woefully blind to reckless and ignore what is happening and what the risks are. I would also say and this is something that my colleagues also would laugh about is we dont need new laws. We are not going to get them. That is a sort of problem that we dont need them. The existing law has room for the creek if prosecutors to bring these kind of cases and to be successful. We were talking before about prosecutors and why they are afraid to bring the creative cases in the part of the reason is that they absolutely hate to lose. If you talk to any of them they will admit 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 the charges from supporting themo do it. Sometimes a the prosecutors hes the light that this kind of thing. One example is last week, the new York Attorney general announced that he was going to prosecute the owner of a papa johns chain that had stolen the employees wage and be appropriated for papers pain of Airline Workers and made the tax is fraudulent to cover up what was going on and he was going to bring criminal charges and is standing by his side was the head of the division of the department of labor. They have the federal officials although i dont overlook the Justice Department at all. They are critical to the whole thing. Its important that we advocate and this is one of the reasons i am so concerned and interested in bees managerial policies. They are made of the worker level making them center, central. Its not going to do anything if the line workers are scapegoated and this has happened in the industry after industry. Its a very serious problem and its one of the things that i talked with my friends in organized labor about. They are very concerned about the workers dont do anything. The company is happy. It tries to fire them all before they ever get charged. Im very happy to move on when they were in a circumstance when they couldnt have been anything different because they didnt have the money or the ability to avoid the accident and finally, as the wage example shows, i think it is really important that we work with the state and local prosecutors on this not just federal prosecutors. One of the little known facts is something russell can talk about even more because he lived through it is that the first criminal case was brought against ford motor in the modern times for the pinto, which you may never have a gas tank in the back when it was i was rearended at a relatively low speeds it turned into a fireball and killed everybody in sight of it and it was a county prosecutor. He covered the case. The county prosecutor in elkhart indiana who brought the charge. Unfortunately he lost, Ford Motor Company paid 2 million through its defense. I dont take my hat to him whenever i think about it. So this wont be easy and i dont want to pretend that it will. I toyed around with the stories and i mentioned the details but i thought it would be sort of tedious. Just take my word for the fact that if you are able to manage or to convince yourself to read these thousands of pages of the very boring reports, and im not suggesting that you would, you should be surprised by some of the things and how obvious it should be that peoples lives are in danger. I want to say that we have already begun work in the workers safety area thanks to the Public We