Like the $3 million fine against a pipeline company for a spill and explosion that killed two10-year-old boys and a teenage boy in Washington State. Or the $2.5 million penalty against nuclear labs around the country for exposing workers to radiation. And the $1.3 million in fines against coal companies for deaths and injuries to miners.
 
Sure sounds like fitting penalties.
 
Yet nearly all of that $6.8 million is a part of the more than $35 billion in fines and other payment penalties against corporations and individuals in civil and criminal cases that has gone uncollected in the past 10 years, according to a study by the Associated Press (AP).
 
The AP report found:
 
Individuals and corporations regularly avoid large, highly publicized penalties for wrongdoing—sometimes through negotiations, sometimes because companies go bankrupt, sometimes due to officials’ failure to keep close track of who owes what under a decentralized collection system.
 
In many high-profile cases, fines are touted by authorities as proof that they are cracking down. Yet frequently those orders are quietly negotiated to just a fraction of their original amounts—as if drivers, faced with fines for speeding, offered the traffic court judge pennies on the dollar, and the judge agreed.
 
In the pipeline case, the $3.5 million fine was reduced to $250,00. The fines against the nuclear labs were waived. In the coal mine cases, one fine, $435,000 assessed against Jim Walters Resources for the deaths of 13 coal miners in a Brookwood. Ala., mine in 2001, was an reduced to $3,000 and the AP reports the rest went largely uncollected.
 
If companies such as these—which saw their fines shrinking to an outrageous 92 percent of the original assessment—and others know that the cost of their wrongdoing isn’t going to hurt much, what kind of incentive do they have to obey the law or follow safety rules?
 
At a March U.S. Senate hearing on mine safety, Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts said the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is failing to seek strong enforcement and meaningful finds to protect miners’ safety.
 
One fundamental problem is that MSHA compromises penalties far too often; whether at conferences held with the operator at MSHA’s district offices or through negotiated settlements, MSHA collects very little in the way of the fines it assesses. This means that operators have little incentive to pay. There has developed a culture whereby operators view MSHA fines as little more than a nuisance, a minor cost of doing business.
 
Over at Confined Space, Jordan Barab notes in his post  on the uncollected fines:
 
Newly appointed OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) director Ed Foulke told his Senate confirmation committee that he saw no need to amend the Occupational Safety and Health Act to make it easier to jail employers who kill. The current penalty structure is perfectly adequate to enforce the law.
 
Tell that to the families of the dead kids and coal miners.