Criminals by any other name.

• Author: Mokhiber, Russell
• Position: Corporate executives

CRIMINALS BY ANY OTHER NAME

Take a moment and listen to the victims of corporate crime in America:

"Some of these executives from the chemical companies belong in jail. We have veterans and children who have spent years trying to cope with catastrophic disabilities without help. Now that we know who is responsible, we want help for the veterans, and we want the people who sold them out to go to prison for it.'

--Michael Ryan, Vietnam veteran, whose daughter Kerry was born with severe disabling birth deformities. Kerry was conceived after her father returned from Vietnam, where he spent much of his time stationed in jungle areas that had been sprayed by a chemical known as Agent Orange.

"We must reserve the right to litigate against the asbestos companies and/or the government. They have been guilty of mass reckless homicide, and if this type of terminology seems harsh, may I remind you, that mesethelioma (an asbestos-related disease) is a harsh cancerous disease which is terminal.'

--Constance Ruggieri, asbestos victim, testifying before Congress against legislation that would limit the lights of asbestos victims to sue asbestos companies for damages.

"I think the top people who did this ought to be put in jail. They have killed women because they would not come out in the open and say their product wasn't safe.'

--Susan Herman, victim of the Dalkon Shield interuterine device (IUD).

The executives responsible for the recent corporate catastrophes popularly known as Agent Orange, asbestos, and the Dalkon Shield are not in jail and will not go to jail. With the exception of informed victims, few of us describe these cases in the language of crime, even though in each case there is a wealth of evidence that victims were put at unacceptably high levels of risk of severe injury and death and that corporate executives knew of the risks, yet failed to take appropriate preventive action. Even Morton Mintz, the award-winning Washington Post investigative reporter and author of At Any Cost: Corporate Greed, Women, and the Dalkon Shield,* a powerful indictment of the A.H. Robins pharmaceutical company, does not use the word "crime' in telling the sordid tale of the Dalkon Shield.

* At Any Cost: Corporate Greed, Women, and the Dalkon Shield. Morton Mintz. Pantheon, $17.95.

To the journalists and lawyers of our world, the trappings of crime do not apply unless there is a conviction. To some victims, however, the words "crime,' "criminal,' and "jail' are eminently applicable. Maybe lawyers and journalists don't use these words because they fear lawsuits, and maybe victims use them because they have less to lose. But perhaps there is something more: It could be that the experience of being victimized strips away the layers of corporate created by million-dollar Madison Avenue advertising, giving victims a more accurate picture of the interests our criminal law protects and those that it should be protecting.

"Crime is a sociopolitical artifact, not a natural phenomenon,' Herbert L. Packer wrote in The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. "We can have as much or as little crime as we please, depending on what we choose to count as criminal.' As a society, we have chosen to have very little corporate "crime,' in Professor Packer's sense of the word, and by so choosing we have insulated the corporation from the effective sanctions and stigma of crime. While criminal sanctions exist as an option for many federal law enforcers, they usually choose less opprobrious, less effective, and more easily won civil sanctions. Consent decrees, recalls, and civil fines are the types of...