Our ‘Fines Only’ Approach to Child Labor Exploitation Exposes Tough on Crime Crowd's Double Standard

The thought of incarcerating corporate lawbreakers isn't even broached, much less considered by otherwise pro-prison Biden, Republicans and Democratic leadership.

I wrote in The Real News in April, that the media response to a widening child labor abuse scandal was remarkably absent calls for prison and jail time. A recent update by the White House on their “actions to combat exploitative child labor” show this “fines only” approach will most likely be the only response to this sprawling criminal enterprise from the powers that be. It’s worth, I think, taking time out to ask why.

President Biden has made a political career off of being a champion of “tough on crime” policies. His name was the primary one attached to the now-infamous federal 1994 crime bill that helped spur the mass incarceration crisis of the 2000s. (He apologized for his role when running for the Democratic primary in 2019).  And he recently has been leading the party’s recent post-George Floyd rebrand as “tough on crime,” a position that came to a head when the White House, with the help of congressional Republicans, overrode the will of D.C. voters by opposing its modest crime reform bill. And last May, the White House “quietly” approved Republican efforts in the House to crack down on Fentanyl by making it a schedule 1 drug, thus supporting a new front of mandatory minimums for possession in the War on Drugs.

But the Biden administration's “actions to combat exploitative child labor” announced last month, six months after an explosive investigation by the New York Times’ Hannah Dreier into widespread child labor abuse, exposes the conspicuous limits of this approach. The update from the Biden Department of Labor doesn’t use the terms “prison” or “jail,” nor does it mention any increase in criminal sanction for those who illegally exploit children as young as 12. Nor does the press release or any statements from the White House lobby Congress to increase prison, jail, or criminal sanction against those who engage in exploitative child labor. The only approach the White House and its various departmental organs have taken, both in enforcing existing laws, and lobbying Congress to create new laws, is seeking to increase the frequency and amount of monetary fines. 

The Biden administration, like much of our centrist and liberal pundit and political class, supports laws that say possessing trace amounts of fentanyl should trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, but thinks corporations that knowingly hire and expose dangerous working conditions to children should simply see higher fines. 

We were told by numerous pundits, police organizations, and politicians during the Chesa Boudin recall and the parallel effort to roll back or repeal Prop 47 (which increased the threshold for felony theft from $400 to $950 in California) that non-carceral punishment like fines effectively make crime legal. If this is a widely held belief, shouldn’t these same forces be calling on the Biden White House and Congress to pass a law to add severe criminal sanction to those who illegally employ children and expose them to dangerous working conditions? By not doing so, aren't they effectively saying child labor should be legal? 

Just this month, a meat processor in eastern Michigan was found guilty of illegally hiring a 17 year old minor to work a meat grinder. The child had his hand ripped off and the meat processor owner was fined a whopping $1,143. The judge took the owner’s side, implied the kid was basically 18 anyway, and moved on. 

“Ionia County District Judge Raymond Voet described the situation as ‘a horrible tragedy,’” WOOD-TV reported, “but said he saw no compelling reason to impose jail or probation.” 

Amazing how it always works out that way. Corporate abuse, even of children, is simply not viewed as a “crime” requiring long prison sentences, but a civil infraction requiring a slap on the wrist and a fine to be paid whenever it's convenient for the offender. It’s worth pointing out that a handful of Democrats did propose another bill, the Child Labor Prevention Act, in March that could see “a year in jail” for “repeat or willful violation of child labor laws,” but, naturally, it had no support from the White House or Democratic leadership and went nowhere.

Just this week, Chipotle (market cap $52.40 billion) was fined a laughable $322,400 for 800 child labor violations by Washington D.C. regulators. Not to be confused with the $7.5 million the company was ordered to pay in 2022 over 30,000 child labor violations. Which ought not be confused the $1.4 million they were fined for 13,000 violations in 2020. Sounds like the slap on the wrist fines aren’t really achieving the goal of preventing child labor abuse. 

The point is not necessarily to call for longer prison sentences for these corporate execs (this has its own pitfalls), but to expose a glaring double standard. In response to an alleged rise in shoplifting offenses over the past couple of years, the most popular, go-to response our media and politicians offered to show they took the “crisis” seriously was to call for an increase in prison time. After the above report in The New York Times—and other exposés by CBS News—detailing widespread child labor abuses caused widespread outrage last spring, virtually no one in power, no one at the Times editorial board, no one of any significance is calling to lock up corporate executives who knowingly employ children and expose them to hazardous working conditions. 

More perversely, these very same corporate criminals are presented as the party that will investigate and regulate themselves. In March, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack wrote a Strongly Worded Letter to the meat and poultry industry telling them, “we look forward to continued engagement with you on the necessary mechanisms for eliminating illegal child labor in your supply chains…Our colleagues at DOL stand ready to provide compliance assistance and best practices toward these ends.” The Times editorial board was even more fawning. After citing criminal offenders like General Mills, J. Crew, Target, Whole Foods, and PepsiCo, The Times insisted these companies “later told The Times that they would investigate any illegal practices and try to end them.”

Oh they’re investigating themselves? Never mind then! How many shoplifters or drug users or fare-beaters are caught red handed and get to tell state authorities and our media not to worry—they’re gonna regulate themselves? None. Only corporate law-breakers get this white glove treatment of polite chiding and self-regulation. For the poor and obscure? It's prison, naturally. 

The Tough on Crime Biden administration tackling child labor abuses without even mentioning prison sentences is but one example of how the primary tool of law enforcement we turn to for regulating the crimes of the poor is simply unthinkable as a tool to go after those in the c-suite. Threatening the executives at Fortune 500 companies is simply not an option, thus the primary thing we are told politicians do when they care about crime—threaten long prison sentences—isn’t even mentioned, much less lobbied for when it comes to this type of widespread corporate law breaking.