The Rocky Flats plea bargain: a case study in the prosecution of organizational crime in the US nuclear weapons complex

Abstract

The integrated framework proposed by Kramer and Michalowski asserts that state-corporate crimes result from motivations, opportunities, and the absence of social controls. This paper examines the 1989–92 prosecution of environmental crimes at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant in order to examine more closely the social control of state-corporate crimes. This paper relies on social-scientific studies, newspaper and magazine articles, histories, and government reports in order to investigate how and why the prosecution progressed as it did. Political conditions and the presence of sympathetic individuals in key positions allowed the prosecution to go forward. However, the prosecution soon was undermined from within by Justice Department headquarters, who were less receptive to the idea of prosecuting environmental contamination as criminal behavior. Although the plea bargain was badly compromised, it helped promote initiatives outside of the criminal justice system that prompted some reforms at the Energy Department. The paper concludes that criminal prosecution by itself is not likely to be effective for controlling state-corporate crime, but can promote and support other techniques that reformers can use to affect the institutional environment in which state-corporate crimes occur.