Finally someone is prosecuting corporate crime fairly:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7843972.stm
To American sensibilities this punishment might seem harsh, but I have to ask: why is that? These people were willfully responsible for the deaths of 6 children and the illness of 300,000 others, shouldn’t they be treated as harshly as any serial killer or war criminal? I’m not a supporter of the death penalty, but if it’s the law of the land shouldn’t it be applied equally to anyone that willfully kills another person?
In America corporate crime often goes completely unpunished. Financial crimes take years to prosecute and ultimately end in fines that are minuscule compared to the amount of money lost in the scandals themselves, often leaving the companies involved solvent and able to rip off their employees and clients at a later date. Environmental crimes lead to fines that are often not enough to completely clean the site in question when they are prosecuted at all. In a recent investigation by The New York times they found that out of 1,242 cases of workplace death stated by OSHA to have been caused by willful negligence of the employer only 7% were prosecuted by the U.S. Government.
Corporate crime has been shown repeatedly to be more damaging by several order of magnitude than street crime, and yet it’s culprits often give up merely a portion of their ill-gotten gains and, at worst, are forced to spend 5-10 years in country-club prison or under house arrest in homes that would house hundreds of the nations poorest people in locales they can only hope to live in.
Related Links:
http://www.alternet.org/story/54093/
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/22/national/22OSHA.html?ex=1232773200&en=2174c2f58aa73762&ei=5070
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