CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
The
Next Wave – Call It Red Collar Crime
20 Corporate Crime Reporter 32(1), August 3, 2006
The next wave?
Call it red collar crime.
That would be white collar crime that results in injury or death.
Think – state reckless homicide prosecutions for death on the job.
Or the criminal investigation in Massachusetts of the death of the woman who
was driving her car through the Big Dig tunnel in downtown Boston last month
when a concrete ceiling panel fell on her car – crushing her to death.
The Boston Globe reported last week the safety officer for the I-90
tunnel contractor warned his superiors during construction of the tunnel that
the bolts could not support the heavy concrete panels, and feared for his conscience
if someone died as a result. (See “Memo Warned of Boston Tunnel Ceiling
Collapse,” 20 Corporate Crime Reporter 31(3), July 31, 2006).
The Massachusetts Attorney General is looking to bringing homicide charges in
connection with death of the woman.
And in recent days, a growing number of international law professors and human
rights groups are calling for a criminal prosecution for war crimes in Lebanon
and Iraq.
Human Rights Watch released a report today titled “Fatal Strikes: Israel’s
Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon,” alleging that Israeli
forces launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military objectives
but excessive civilian cost.
“In many cases, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military
target,” the report found. “In some instances, Israeli forces appear
to have deliberately targeted civilians.”
In some cases, the attacks constituted war crimes, the report found.
Human Rights Watch called on the Secretary-General of the United Nations to
establish an International Commission of Inquiry to investigate reports of such
violations, including possible war crimes, and to “formulate recommendations
with a view to holding accountable those who violated the law.”
“That commission should examine both Israeli attacks in Lebanon and Hezbollah
attacks in Israel,” the report recommended.
Francis Boyle, a Professor of Law at the University of Illinois last week called
on the UN to “immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal
for Israel (ICTI).”
Boyle said that such a war crimes tribunal would organized along the lines of
the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY).
“The purpose of the ICTI would be to investigate and prosecute Israeli
war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the peoples of Lebanon
and Palestine – just as the ICTY did for the victims of international
crimes committed by Serbia and the Milosevic Regime throughout the Balkans,”
Boyle said.
In an interview with Corporate Crime Reporter this week, John Quigley, a Professor
of Law at Ohio State University, said that Israel’s attack on Lebanon
was legally “unprovoked.”
What about Hezbollah’s killing of the three soldiers and kidnapping of
two that Israel claims started it?
Quigley said that would be considered “a border incident” and not
an “armed attack” under international law.
“Now, if I’m wrong about that, if one were to say that what was
done by Hezbollah constitutes an armed attack on Israel, you still have in the
law of self-defense the notion of proportionality,” Quigley said. “You
act in self-defense, but you can only act in a way that is proportional to what
has been done to you. So, even if one could say that Israel was subjected to
an armed attack and could act in self-defense, it would be limited in its reaction.”
Quigley has a nuanced view of criminal prosecution of war crimes.
He is the author of a number of books on international law, most recently The
Genocide Convention: An International Law Analysis (Ashgate, 2006).
“There is a serious issue with regard to criminal prosecution,”
Quigley said. “If in principle, someone has done something that would
subject him or her to criminal prosecution, you have to ask – does it
make sense to do it?
Does it achieve a purpose? And that is the kind of issue that one would consider as a prosecutor as well.”
“There are some who are strongly of the view that aggressive prosecution
is appropriate,” Quigley said. “And there are others that are less
optimistic that prosecuting people for these kinds of acts is going to achieve
anything in terms of preventing warfare in the future. I see criminal prosecution
as desirable in principle, but often in practice it turns out not to be feasible,
and in some situations it is certainly not helpful.”
(For a complete transcript of the question/answer format Interview with Professor
Quigley, see 20 Corporate Crime Reporter 32(10), August 7, 2006, print
edition only.)
(As far as we could determine, the term “red collar crime” was first
used in this context by a California activist who calls himself “The Toxic
Reverend.” It has also been used by Chinese activists in referring to
crimes committed by their government.)
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