(johnmac -- Stacy is an old friend, is the founder of "ECHO, the virtual salon of nyc", a New York ISP and on-line conferencing system (http://www.echonyc.com/), and is a drummer. She has been an NPR commentator and, in addition to her moust recent book, "The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad.", has authored "Cyberville: Clicks, Culture, and the Creation of an Online Town" and "Waiting for My Cats to Die: A Morbid Memoir". She has also been a guest speaker at Monroe College (among other places).Information on her most current book follows this column.)
>From the New York Times -- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/16/opinion/16horn.html?th&emc=th Op-Ed Contributor Counting Corporate Crooks by Stacy Horn THIS week, Bernard Ebbers, the former chairman and founder of WorldCom, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in an $11 billion fraud that bankrupted his telecommunications company. Meanwhile, Kenneth Lay, the founder of Enron, awaits trial on fraud and conspiracy, and Dennis Kozlowski, the former chief executive of Tyco, is soon to be sentenced after being convicted, along with his chief financial officer, of stealing $150 million from the company and reaping $430 million more by selling company shares while inflating the stock value. These numbers are shocking, but what's more shocking is that we don't know how many more Bernard Ebberses are out there. We have no idea if white collar crime is going up or down. In contrast, police departments across the country must report annually to the Federal Bureau of Investigation every murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in their jurisdiction - not to mention every rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft and car theft. The bureau incorporates this information, along with arrest statistics, into a crime reporting program, which is published in a report called "Crime in the United States." As a result, we know, for instance, that the murder rate in New York City is going down. But we don't know how many white collar crimes have been committed or how many arrests have been made in connection with those crimes. If you call the state attorney general's office, the F.B.I. or the Securities and Exchange Commission, no one will be able to tell you how many white collar crimes were committed in any year, or provide any arrest statistics. The investigators there could be doing a great job, but they might also be concentrating on a few, select cases for years, letting countless others go by. Granted, the S.E.C. publishes the number of cases it is working on in its annual report, but this number is meaningless without knowing the total number of crimes committed. What good would it do to know that the New York Police Department arrested 50 murderers, if you don't know the total number of murders? No one is auditing the agencies charged with investigating white collar crime the way the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. audit the police. And because the bodies of white collar crime victims are not piling up at the morgue, there is little public pressure to do so. This should change. As devastating as murder is for the victims and their loved ones, it's a contained crime. Significant time, money and manpower are spent tracking down murderers, even though statistically, they are not likely to kill again. But the effects of corporate crime are felt worldwide, sending ripples throughout the economy in the form of decreased investment and product development. Such fraud can send innocent hard-working people, like Enron's 21,000 employees, into poverty or financial distress. We need to have the same fix on white collar crime that we have on murder. The F.B.I. recently began trying to incorporate white collar crime into its crime reporting program, but it does not include itself among the agencies required to provide information about the crimes it investigates. Nonetheless, this is a good place to start. In order for such a reporting system to work, however, every state and federal agency investigating white collar crime needs to submit information about these crimes. And of course, we would need to establish what exactly constitutes a white collar crime. Congress enacted the National Hate Crimes Statistics Act in 1990 requiring the Justice Department to gather information on crimes based on race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity; perhaps a similar mandate could be passed for white collar crime. Sure, there are obstacles. The line between what is criminal and what is unethical can be blurry: certain accounting tactics might be dubious but not illegal, and prosecutors must demonstrate criminal intent. Murder is always murder, but accounting rules change. And without a dead body, it's harder to tell how many people are getting away with your retirement account. That said, to a conscientious and curious investigator or accountant, where there's significant fraud, there's often a big bold chalk outline in the financial statements. Perhaps the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which outlines accounting information that must be provided to the S.E.C., which then makes it available on its Web site, could help. Don't get me wrong, murder is horrifying, and it's right to hold murderers and the police departments investigating them accountable. But unlike many murderers sitting in prison for life, these gentleman bandits, these intelligent, educated men and women who slowly and methodically plan the crimes that wreck the future of untold numbers of people, know exactly what they are doing and who will be hurt. Their crimes of cold, selfish greed reflect, in their own way, even more indifference to life than murder. In terms of the number of lives affected, ruined or lessened, and the cost to society as a whole, when it comes to crime in the United States, the more pervasive and devastating problem might be white collar crime. Or it might not. That's the issue: we have no way of knowing. Stacy Horn is the author, most recently, of "The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad." Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company -------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From Amazon: The Restless Sleep : Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad by Stacy Horn Publisher: Viking Adult (July 7, 2005) ISBN: 0670034193 Editorial Reviews >From Publishers Weekly NPR contributor Horn's deft writing and unique access to detectives laboring to bring justice to the many forgotten victims of murder create a significant addition to the genre. Horn tracks four very different unsolved killingsa brutal torture of drug dealers while their young children were restrained in an adjoining room; the murder of an off-duty cop who interrupted a robbery in progress; an apparent sex crime turned fatal that claimed the life of a teenager; and the fetishistic strangling of a transplanted Southerner. Each crime presents unique obstacles for the dedicated detectives assigned to them, and each yields very different results. The heroic and three-dimensional portrayals of the individual police officers are compelling, but many will find more novelty in Horn's detailed assessment of the bureaucratic turf battles surrounding the cold case squad, and the serious obstacles NYPD reformers continue to face. Several notches above the typical reporter's insights into the realities of criminal justice, and, given the continued popularity of the CBS TV drama Cold Case, Horn's book is likely to find a wide readership. Agent, Betsy Lerner. (July 11) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Book Description There is no statute of limitations on murder. Homicide is one crime you pay forbut first you must be caught. In New York City, thousands of murders remain unsolved. Where does the police department begin after an unsolved case has gone cold? In this fascinating, in-depth narrative, a writer uses her unprecedented access to chronicle the inner workings of the elite unit of homicide detectives charged with the overwhelming task of solving cold cases going back as far as 1951. As the popularity of police television series such as Law & Order, CSI, and Cold Case makes plain, the publics interest in police work is immense and growing. The Restless Sleep tells of a real-life subculture of crime solving and of the talented, indefatigable, ill-at-ease detectives who lock on to a case, sift through decades-old case files, and chase down seemingly exhausted leadstrying to see what others have missed. Following four cases from inception to resolution, Horn depicts the world of the victims and their murderers "who thought theyd gotten away with it," along with the scientific advancements that dont always yield hoped- for answers, and the harrowing politics and tangled history of the infamous NYPD. A completely addictive read as admiring of the successes as it is critical of the bureaucracy, The Restless Sleep promises to become a true-crime favorite. About the Author Stacy Horn, a contributor to NPRs "All Things Considered," is the author of Waiting for My Cats to Die: A Memoir and Cyberville. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The 'johnmacsgroup' Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. 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