[corp-focus] The Encyclopedia of White Collar and Corporate Crime

[robert weissman]

The Encyclopedia of White Collar and Corporate Crime
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

If we want to do something about the powerful institutions and
individuals that shape our lives, we need to educate ourselves about
their culture of criminality -- and the public efforts to bring them to
justice.

One good place to start is the Encyclopedia of White Collar and
Corporate Crime (Sage Publishers, 2004).

The two-volume set is edited by Lawrence Salinger, a professor of
criminology at Arkansas State University.

The 500 or so entries are listed alphabetically -- from A.H. Robins
Company, the company that brought you the defective Dalkon Shield
intrauterine device, to Worldcom, the company that perpetrated the
largest accounting fraud in history.

About 100 of the entries are the corporate criminals themselves.

About another 100 are people -- from Spiro Agnew, the first vice
president to resign in scandal, to Stanton Wheeler, a Yale professor who
did white collar crime research.

Leafing through the two volumes, the first thing that strikes you is
that despite the recent headlines, corporate crime has a rich history.

Salinger profiles the activists who have sought to reign in corporate
crime -- Rachel Carson, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, Ralph Nader.

He profiles the prosecutors who have prosecuted it -- Rudy Giuliani and
Eliot Spitzer.

And, being a criminologist, he is big on criminologists who have studied
it.

We asked him to name the major corporate criminologists in history, and
he gave us a list -- Edwin Sutherland, Frank Hartung, Paul Tappan,
Edward Alsworth Ross, Donald Cressey, Herbert Edelhertz and Ezra Stoddard.

Ross is one of our favorites.

In 1907, Ross wrote a book titled Sin and Society featuring what he
called "the criminaloid" -- a social type who enjoys a public image as a
pillar of the community and paragon of virtue, but beneath the veneer of
respectability is actually a very different persona, one that is
committed to personal gain through any means necessary.

Here=92s a snippet of the Ross entry in the Encyclopedia of White Collar
and Corporate Crime:

"The criminaloids encounter feeble opposition and since their practices
are often more lucrative than the typical criminal act, they distance
their more scrupulous rivals in business and politics and reap an
uncommon worldly prosperity. The key to the criminaloid is not evil
impulse, but moral insensibility. The criminaloid prefers to prey on the
anonymous public. He goes beyond this by convincing others to act
instead of acting himself, which protects him from liability and being
labeled a criminal, and is instead immune to such scrutiny. The
criminaloid practices a protective impersonation of the good. The
criminaloid counterfeits the good citizen."

Sound familiar?

Despite the serious effort put behind producing the Encyclopedia, it is
also clear that Salinger has a wicked sense of humor.

On page 280, in the entry for "elite crime," there are two pictures.

On the left is the picture of a businessman in a suit. On the right is
the picture of a disheveled bearded man leaning on the hood of a junked
car.

"The concept of elite crime: the man above is convicted of $250 million
in stock fraud, while the man at right ... is convicted of stealing a
$2,500 car from his employer. Which man will serve significant, hard
time in prison?"

Salinger also has a thing for religious crooks.

On page 683, under the picture of a priest and in the entry for
"religious fraud," is the caption, "Religious fraud often involves
raising millions of dollars in the name of pious efforts, only to see
the believers' money end up in the ministers=92 bank account, paying for a
lavish lifestyle."

Even for those who live, drink and eat corporate crime, there is
something to learn from the Encyclopedia.

Conspiracy theorists have their grassy knolls.

Corporate criminologists have their Grassy Narrows -- an entry in the
Encyclopedia. According to the entry, the Grassy Narrows is a community
in Ontario, Canada where several hundred Ojibwa people became the
victims of mercury poisoning from a nearby paper mill.

Martha Stewart now sits in prison in Alderson, West Virginia. She too
has an entry in the Encyclopedia. We learn she was born Martha Kostyra.
(Martha Kostyra=92s Living?). Stewart was convicted of lying to cover up a
stock deal.

Do you know your corporate crime?

Kepone, Love Canal, Times Beach, Buffalo Creek, Exxon Valdez, Three Mile
Island, Thalidomide?

Jim and Tammy Bakker, Ivan Boesky, Charles Keating, Marc Rich, John
Rusnak, Michael Milken, Nick Leeson?

At the least, every major university and law school library needs to get
a copy of the Encyclopedia of White Collar and Corporate Crime.

Maybe reading about the history of corporate crime will inspire the next
generation of prosecutors, citizens, reporters, and judges to protect
the nation and its citizens better than we were able or willing to.



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

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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