(Fwd) non regulation of corporate polluters

["Michael Meuser" <meuser@mapcruzin.com>]

fyi:

Support Your Local Corporate Crime Police
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Earlier this year, the Justice Department put out a fifteen-page memo
titled "Federal Prosecutions of Corporations."

The purpose of the memo was to help federal prosecutors decide when to
prosecute -- and not prosecute -- corporations.

It's a great little memo. Written by Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder,
the memo makes the point right up front that "vigorous enforcement of the
criminal laws against corporate wrongdoers, where appropriate, results in
great benefits for law enforcement and the public, particularly in the area
of white collar crime."

According to the memo, "prosecutors should be aware of the important public
benefits that may flow from indicting a corporation in appropriate cases."

When indicted for criminal conduct that is pervasive throughout the
industry, corporations are likely to take remedial action. Thus, "an
indictment often provides a unique opportunity for deterrence on a massive
scale." In addition, an indictment may result in specific deterrence by the
culture of the indicted corporation and its employees.

In corporate crime cases that carry with them a substantial risk of great
public harm -- like environmental crime cases -- there is a "substantial
federal interest in indicting the corporation."

That's what we thought. The memo is well written, and a good guide for
prosecutors. The Justice Department should have put out a press release
announcing the memo to the world, instead of sitting on it until someone
on the inside leaked it out to us.

Perhaps one reason Janet Reno's people didn't want it to go public is that
the Justice Department isn't walking the talk -- especially in the
environmental crimes arena.

Prosecution of environmental crimes has sharply fallen during the Clinton
Administration, according to a compilation of court records released last
week by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Comparing statistics from a three-year period in the Bush Administration
(1989-91) with a similar period in the Clinton Administration (1996-98),
the PEER review shows dramatic declines in criminal referrals,
prosecutions and convictions:

* more than a one-quarter (27 percent) decrease in prosecutions;

* a greater than one-third (38 percent) drop in convictions; and

* a nearly 10 percent decline in the conviction rate.

Even though the Justice Department is pursuing fewer cases, it is also
declining more cases (26 percent more) brought by referring agencies, such
as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or the Fish & Wildlife
Service.

"The criminal environmental enforcement record of the previous incumbent
was clearly better by virtually every measure of prosecutorial effort,"
commented PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, a former state prosecutor.
"Maybe George Bush really was the Environmental President."

The statistics also reinforce the results of PEER employee surveys and
interviews with federal prosecutors and law enforcement officers about the
de-emphasis of environmental enforcement within their agencies.

For example, PEER is defending Gregory Sasse, an Assistant United States
Attorney in Cleveland, who says he has suffered retaliation for pursuing
pollution prosecutions under the Clinton Administration.

Sasse is probably one of the more aggressive prosecutors of environmental
crimes in the country. And because of it, it appears, he has been isolated
and discriminated against.

In a complaint filed in 1996, Sasse says that his superiors within the
Department punished him for prosecuting polluters.

In one case, reported on recently by the Boston Globe's David Armstrong,
Sasse was briefing a supervisor about a steel company that was illegally
releasing toxic pollutants into the air and sickening nearby residents.

According to Sasse, the supervisor asked him -- "If the neighbors don't
like it, why don't they move?"

When Sasse insisted that the pollution was making the neighbors sick,
Sasse says the supervisor told him, "people get sick all the time."

"I was sick last month and nobody opened a criminal investigation," Sasse
reports the supervisor saying.

Sometimes, line prosecutors rebel against their superiors. That has been
the case in New England recently, where for four years, line prosecutors
have been complaining about EPA New England enforcement chief John
DeVillars.

In a May 13, 1998 letter to EPA Administrator Carol Browner, PEER alleged
that DeVillars "has engaged in a pattern of activity which has undermined
environmental enforcement, given a distinct impression of favoritism
within certain segments of the regulated community, and constrained
regional enforcement staff from properly carrying out their duties."

Earlier this month, under pressure from PEER, DeVillars abruptly resigned
his position, saying that he was leaving the EPA to teach at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and to pursue an unspecified
"business venture."

Unfortunately, in our society, dominated as it is by the corporate
criminal elite, line prosecutors like Sasse are left fighting for their
professional lives, while political operatives like DeVillars get plum
jobs at top flight universities.

Not exactly what Eric Holder recommended in his memo.


Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common
Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org)

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman




Michael R. Meuser
meuser@mapcruzin.com

GIS, Pollution Maps, WebMaps, Training, Research
"Making data make sense"
http://www.mapcruzin.com/meuser/

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