Corporate Crime

Ernest Conine is to be commended for the sense of realism and fairness evident in his column (Editorial Pages, July 8), advocating the imprisonment of corporate criminals.

In a sense, however, the business executives who authorize fraudulent overcharges or the violation of antitrust, worker safety, consumer protection, insider trading, price-fixing and similar laws are simply playing by the permissive and pervasive rules of a ruthless economy that defines success as profit-maximization.

Caught between the customs of business behavior and the law of the land, “white collar” crooks choose the former as usually entailing the fewest risks and almost always the richest rewards.

While stiffer criminal sentences might induce corporate officials to re-examine their options, it is not certain to alter their choices. The purpose of the corporation, after all, is not to promote the safety, comfort or well-being of the people; it is make money. Corporate criminals, therefore, are not bad people who corrupt an essentially beneficent capitalism. It is the imperatives of capitalism, rather, that tend to corrupt otherwise good people.

CHUCK SOHNER

Los Angeles