Sch-Corp.Crime&violnc

Under the rubric ``corporate violence'' the author, editor of the Washington, D.C., newsletter Corporate Crime Reporter, lists unsafe manufacture or contamination of products, environmental pollution and the bypassing or corruption of government. Among the 36 cases cited here are automobile and plane-crash fatalities due to mechanical defects, cigarette-induced deaths and such industrial poisonings as those at Love Canal, Three Mile Island and Bhopal. Mokhiber charges that well-funded official support, lobbying, deceptive public relations and advertising have helped bias a legal system in big business' favor in cases like the Dalkon Shield-caused abortions and infections, miners' black lung and infant birth defects resulting from mothers' ingestion of DES and thalidomide. The 50 suggestions offered here to prevent and penalize corporate abuses are based on shifting such cases from civil to criminal courts with effective sanctions instead of consent decrees. The author further advocates that Congress legislate a federal homicide statute covering mass-scale killings, that responsibility for deterring and reporting abuses be shared by company executives, police and community groups, plus the enactment of stiffer penalties for offenders and more substantial restitution to victims. (June)