Public Citizen to host discussion of CPR Member Scholar Rena Steinzor’s new book, “Why Not Jail? Industrial Catastrophes, Corporate Malfeasance, and Government Inaction.”
On Monday, July 20, 2015 Public Citizen, the Center for Progressive Reform and the Bauman Foundation will lead a discussion focused on CPR’s immediate past president and University of Maryland Law School professor Rena Steinzor’s book, “Why Not Jail? Industrial Catastrophes, Corporate Malfeasance, and Government Inaction.”
Watch and listen to a recording of this discussion.
Date: Monday, July 20
Time: 4:00-5:30 pm
Place: Offices of Public Citizen 1600 20th Street, NW (northwest corner of 20th and Q, NW) Washington, DC 20009
Presenters Include:
Rena Steinzor – Professor, University of Maryland Carey School of Law and immediate past president, Center for Progressive Reform
Robert Weissman – President, Public Citizen (Moderator)
Russell Mokhiber – Editor of Corporate Crime Reporter and the co-author (with Rob Weissman) of “Corporate Predators: The Hunt for Mega-Profits and the Attack on Democracy and Corporate Crime and Violence, Big Business Power and the Abuse of the Public Trust.”
RSVP: RSVP here
In what has the makings of a trend, or at least a boomlet, U.S. Attorneys in five states have obtained indictments against individual corporate executives in six cases where corporate malfeasance killed and injured workers, consumers, or the environment. The cases involve drinking water contaminated by a rusted chemical tank leak in West Virginia; tainted steroid injections shipped nationwide by a small compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts; a massive explosion in an underground mine owned and operated by now-defunct Massey Energy, again in West Virginia; cantaloupe infected with bacteria at a farm in Colorado; peanut paste laced with salmonella and shipped from Georgia despite positive tests for the bacteria; and the infamous Macondo well blowout that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and spilled 205 million gallons ofcrude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
What explains the decisions to prosecute these cases? Why has it taken so long to overcome federal lethargy about pursuing white collar crime in the health and safety, not to mention the financial, sectors? How does the selection of deferred prosecution agreements to settle such cases undermine deterrence? What can be done to encourage expansion of such efforts?
Join Steinzor, Weissman and Mokiber for the answers to these pressing questions and an examination of what can be done to hold bad corporate actors accountable for crimes of negligence that endanger the public health, safety and the environment.
