SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Despite Epic Crash of World Economy, White Collar Prosecutions at 20-Year Low
But that doesn't mean Wall Street malfeasance itself is on the wane, researchers point out
Aug 04, 2015
Despite lofty rhetoric from politicians who vowed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to hold Wall Street accountable, U.S. Justice Department statistics show a "long-term collapse" of federal white collar crime prosecutions, which are down to their lowest level in 20 years, according to a new report from Syracuse University.
The analysis of thousands of records by the university's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows a more than 36 percent decline in such prosecutions since the middle of the Clinton administration, when the decline first began. While there was an uptick early in Barack Obama's presidency, current projections indicate that by the end of the 2015 fiscal year, such prosecutions will be at their lowest level since 1995.
But that doesn't mean white collar crime itself--which involves a wide range of activities such as health care fraud and the violation of tax, securities, antitrust, federal procurement, and other laws--is on the wane.
"The decline in federal white collar crime prosecutions does not necessarily indicate there has been a decline in white collar crime," the researchers are swift to point out. "Rather, it may reflect shifting enforcement policies by each of the administrations and the various agencies, the changing availabilities of essential staff and congressionally mandated alterations in the laws."
They add that "because such enforcement by state and local agencies for these crimes sometimes is erratic or nonexistent, the declining role of the federal government could be of great significance."
Furthermore, failure to prosecute white collar crimes does more than let individual fraudsters off the hook, as journalist Glenn Greenwald argued in 2013:
The harms from this refusal to hold Wall Street accountable are the same generated by the general legal immunity the US political culture has vested in its elites. Just as was true for the protection of torturers and illegal eavesdroppers, it ensures that there are no incentives to avoid similar crimes in the future. It is an injustice in its own right to allow those with power and wealth to commit destructive crimes with impunity. It subverts democracy and warps the justice system when a person's treatment under the law is determined not by their acts but by their power, position, and prestige. And it exposes just how shameful is the American penal state by contrasting the immunity given to the nation's most powerful with the merciless and brutal punishment meted out to its most marginalized.
But while news of the 20-year low is troubling, it's not particularly surprising. As journalist David Sirota noted on Thursday for the International Business Times:
In 2012, President Obama pledged to "hold Wall Street accountable" for financial misdeeds related to the financial crisis. But as financial industry donations flooded into Obama's reelection campaign, his Justice Department officials promoted policies that critics say embodied a "too big to jail" doctrine for financial crime.
Sirota went on to point out, both the former head of the Justice Department's criminal division, Lanny Breuer, and former Attorney General Eric Holder made similar remarks at the time. "Prior to serving in the Obama Justice Department, both Breuer and Holder worked at white-collar defense firm Covington & Burling," Sirota wrote. "Both of them went back to work for the firm again immediately after leaving their government posts."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Deirdre Fulton
Deirdre Fulton is a former Common Dreams senior editor and staff writer. Previously she worked as an editor and writer for the Portland Phoenix and the Boston Phoenix, where she was honored by the New England Press Association and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. A Boston University graduate, Deirdre is a co-founder of the Maine-based Lorem Ipsum Theater Collective and the PortFringe theater festival. She writes young adult fiction in her spare time.
Despite lofty rhetoric from politicians who vowed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to hold Wall Street accountable, U.S. Justice Department statistics show a "long-term collapse" of federal white collar crime prosecutions, which are down to their lowest level in 20 years, according to a new report from Syracuse University.
The analysis of thousands of records by the university's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows a more than 36 percent decline in such prosecutions since the middle of the Clinton administration, when the decline first began. While there was an uptick early in Barack Obama's presidency, current projections indicate that by the end of the 2015 fiscal year, such prosecutions will be at their lowest level since 1995.
But that doesn't mean white collar crime itself--which involves a wide range of activities such as health care fraud and the violation of tax, securities, antitrust, federal procurement, and other laws--is on the wane.
"The decline in federal white collar crime prosecutions does not necessarily indicate there has been a decline in white collar crime," the researchers are swift to point out. "Rather, it may reflect shifting enforcement policies by each of the administrations and the various agencies, the changing availabilities of essential staff and congressionally mandated alterations in the laws."
They add that "because such enforcement by state and local agencies for these crimes sometimes is erratic or nonexistent, the declining role of the federal government could be of great significance."
Furthermore, failure to prosecute white collar crimes does more than let individual fraudsters off the hook, as journalist Glenn Greenwald argued in 2013:
The harms from this refusal to hold Wall Street accountable are the same generated by the general legal immunity the US political culture has vested in its elites. Just as was true for the protection of torturers and illegal eavesdroppers, it ensures that there are no incentives to avoid similar crimes in the future. It is an injustice in its own right to allow those with power and wealth to commit destructive crimes with impunity. It subverts democracy and warps the justice system when a person's treatment under the law is determined not by their acts but by their power, position, and prestige. And it exposes just how shameful is the American penal state by contrasting the immunity given to the nation's most powerful with the merciless and brutal punishment meted out to its most marginalized.
But while news of the 20-year low is troubling, it's not particularly surprising. As journalist David Sirota noted on Thursday for the International Business Times:
In 2012, President Obama pledged to "hold Wall Street accountable" for financial misdeeds related to the financial crisis. But as financial industry donations flooded into Obama's reelection campaign, his Justice Department officials promoted policies that critics say embodied a "too big to jail" doctrine for financial crime.
Sirota went on to point out, both the former head of the Justice Department's criminal division, Lanny Breuer, and former Attorney General Eric Holder made similar remarks at the time. "Prior to serving in the Obama Justice Department, both Breuer and Holder worked at white-collar defense firm Covington & Burling," Sirota wrote. "Both of them went back to work for the firm again immediately after leaving their government posts."
Deirdre Fulton
Deirdre Fulton is a former Common Dreams senior editor and staff writer. Previously she worked as an editor and writer for the Portland Phoenix and the Boston Phoenix, where she was honored by the New England Press Association and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. A Boston University graduate, Deirdre is a co-founder of the Maine-based Lorem Ipsum Theater Collective and the PortFringe theater festival. She writes young adult fiction in her spare time.
Despite lofty rhetoric from politicians who vowed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to hold Wall Street accountable, U.S. Justice Department statistics show a "long-term collapse" of federal white collar crime prosecutions, which are down to their lowest level in 20 years, according to a new report from Syracuse University.
The analysis of thousands of records by the university's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows a more than 36 percent decline in such prosecutions since the middle of the Clinton administration, when the decline first began. While there was an uptick early in Barack Obama's presidency, current projections indicate that by the end of the 2015 fiscal year, such prosecutions will be at their lowest level since 1995.
But that doesn't mean white collar crime itself--which involves a wide range of activities such as health care fraud and the violation of tax, securities, antitrust, federal procurement, and other laws--is on the wane.
"The decline in federal white collar crime prosecutions does not necessarily indicate there has been a decline in white collar crime," the researchers are swift to point out. "Rather, it may reflect shifting enforcement policies by each of the administrations and the various agencies, the changing availabilities of essential staff and congressionally mandated alterations in the laws."
They add that "because such enforcement by state and local agencies for these crimes sometimes is erratic or nonexistent, the declining role of the federal government could be of great significance."
Furthermore, failure to prosecute white collar crimes does more than let individual fraudsters off the hook, as journalist Glenn Greenwald argued in 2013:
The harms from this refusal to hold Wall Street accountable are the same generated by the general legal immunity the US political culture has vested in its elites. Just as was true for the protection of torturers and illegal eavesdroppers, it ensures that there are no incentives to avoid similar crimes in the future. It is an injustice in its own right to allow those with power and wealth to commit destructive crimes with impunity. It subverts democracy and warps the justice system when a person's treatment under the law is determined not by their acts but by their power, position, and prestige. And it exposes just how shameful is the American penal state by contrasting the immunity given to the nation's most powerful with the merciless and brutal punishment meted out to its most marginalized.
But while news of the 20-year low is troubling, it's not particularly surprising. As journalist David Sirota noted on Thursday for the International Business Times:
In 2012, President Obama pledged to "hold Wall Street accountable" for financial misdeeds related to the financial crisis. But as financial industry donations flooded into Obama's reelection campaign, his Justice Department officials promoted policies that critics say embodied a "too big to jail" doctrine for financial crime.
Sirota went on to point out, both the former head of the Justice Department's criminal division, Lanny Breuer, and former Attorney General Eric Holder made similar remarks at the time. "Prior to serving in the Obama Justice Department, both Breuer and Holder worked at white-collar defense firm Covington & Burling," Sirota wrote. "Both of them went back to work for the firm again immediately after leaving their government posts."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.